


Harsh, Fabulous Wisdom

by nyctanthes



Series: 1985 was a good year [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Adolescent Coping Mechanisms, Alcohol, Drugs, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Learning To Accept Your Inner Freak, PTSD, Parent-child relationships, Post S3, Powers With Dubious Utility, Queer Gen, Self-Harm, Sibling Love, despite the tags, this has a hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23107768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: In which Will Byers loses a best friend and the only home he's ever known, gains a sister, develops a smidgen of powers and, despite himself, figures out a thing or two.
Relationships: Byers Family, Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Will Byers & Jonathan Byers, Will Byers & Joyce Byers, Will Byers & Lucas Sinclair
Series: 1985 was a good year [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1439200
Comments: 14
Kudos: 49





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third and last story in my Byers family focused, post-S3 series: _1985 Was A Good Year_. It's also a companion piece to my post-S2 Will story, [So This Is The Aftermath](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16675018). 
> 
> At the end of Part II of this series, I promised this story would be relatively lighthearted. I maintain that it's not especially angsty. But it did take a darker turn than I anticipated, back when I first drafted it. (Fall 2019! This hiatus is a long one.) 
> 
> There's a big difference between how 12 year old Will handles his problems and how 15 year old Will does. At no time are his methods especially healthy; but neither this nor the earlier story are about recovery from trauma. Rather, they're about family, coping and Will living his life. He's trying to take control of it the best he knows how, during a given stretch of time. In this case, from late 1985 through early 1987.

When Mom and Jonathan were in their rooms, doors shut tight, he and El slept together. 

Sometimes. 

El started it. She snuck in. Eased the door open, eased the door shut. Crouched by his bed, bent kneed on the scratchy, khaki and stone drab rug that mimicked the flatland outside his window, hushed face inches from his. She stared at him. Who knows how long she watched him: mouth slack, dog sour breath wafting, cheek pressed into his open hand, palm braced on his ear, elbow in the air drawing a listing, ragged triangle. 

He opened his eyes. Like in a horror movie there she was, mirroring him: cheek on palm, hand on ear. Her elbow carefully symmetrical and pointed directly at the ceiling. Her mouth open and eyes closed. 

A strangled yelp escaped him and she jumped. Faster than he thought possible, she usually moved so _deliberately_ \- she sat up and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t scare me like that!”

His eyes bulged. _Me scare you like that?_ As he did it, he wished could take it back. He knew how he looked: vulnerable and cute, but also vaguely creepy, like a lemur or another weird animal that was half this, half that. A flying squirrel or a platypus. 

_Everything’s fine. I don't want to be alone_. He swore he felt her thoughts, sharp and cold. A frostbite behind his eyes, precipitating tears. Close and insistent. A pressure deep in his sinuses, wadding a lump down his throat.

_Ok. I promise not to scream again,_ he thought back. 

El’s hand remained in place.

He nodded his head.

She removed it.

He must have imagined it. It wouldn't be the first time, he reminded himself, he heard things he didn’t.

“What’s going on? What are you doing here?” His voice quavered, then cracked, but El didn’t comment. She was never judgmental that way. 

“How do you sleep like that? It’s so uncomfortable.”

“How would I know? I am not awake when I’m doing it!” 

She looked at him earnestly. (He wondered: Did she ever look at people sarcastically? Sneeringly? With boredom or weariness; impatience, exasperation, deceit? He hadn’t yet seen it. Only witnessed laughter or anger, sadness, love and hunger. Puppy dog emotions. Daily, he resisted the urge to pat her on the head. Or kick her. He'd find out if her eyes became damp and confused before she ran away. She’d have to run away, he thought, satisfaction verging on gloating, an ounce of care if you sifted for it. There was no reason to be scared of her. Not anymore.) 

“I can’t sleep. It’s too quiet.”

“Jonathan never sleeps, not here at least.” His whole life Jonathan's quiet presence, his ability to sleep through the good, the bad and the indifferent had been a reassuring constant. Jonathan's room - whether or not he was in it, whether or not he was awake - was where he went when he wanted to be alone but not _alone._ When he wanted to feel safe. Another way this place wasn’t home and would never be home.

“I know. But he’s working on applications and…”

“These days, he’s not the most relaxing person to be around.” For weeks, Jonathan had been low-key suggesting, steadily ramping up to straightforward verging on aggressive agitating, that he should move into the Airstream that came with the property. He wouldn't take no for an answer. 

"There's no need for me to sleep in that closet sized room off the kitchen when there's an entire mini-apartment sitting empty," he argued, bringing it up as a topic for discussion even when Mom didn't want to talk - or listen. A recently renovated, free-standing miniature house the owners had thrown in for a fraction of its real cost. It had cowboy print curtains and a cactus print couch; vinyl flooring that was supposed to look like wood, actual wood bunk beds and a shiny, tiny kitchen. 

“Will you explain to us, Mom, exactly how you managed that?" She blinked vaguely, as if she didn't understand the question. They knew what she meant. _I have my ways. Ways I am under no obligation to share with you. Children._

Jonathan did what he’d always done to keep them balanced and semi-steady, to maintain their wobbly forward momentum. But as soon as the dust from the move settled he began to do more of what he wanted. In the beginning grimly, a task he set himself, an unspoken goal he had to reach. _You want to drag us out of Hawkins, Mom, do things differently? Fine. Watch me. I'm going to make a friend. I'm going to be out all night and stumble home; not because I'm tired from work but because that's what eighteen year olds do._ Very quickly this variation of independence, this new and at times prickly distance from her, from them became something he relished. 

He didn’t say it to El, but he suspected that in a couple of weeks they’d be back to three in the house. A less than optimum threesome.

With his mention of Jonathan's new, night owl tendencies El widened her eyes in silent, solemn agreement. She gave him a slight up and down with her chin.

For a time they were like this, him lying in his bed and her on the floor next to him, looking at each other. They weren’t studying each other so much as making eye contact while their minds drifted. 

He tried again. _You suck. Mike only wants to talk to you. When he visited he was all about you and barely had time for me. It’s not that I want to talk to him on the phone or care what happens when he's here. It’s that I hate you. You ruined everything. Nothing has been the same, nothing has been good since you showed up._

No reaction. It was probably for the best. It mostly wasn’t true. 

He sat up and brought with him his sheet, a newish one that lay stiff on top of him, slid off every time he tried to wrap it around him. It and his brand new, too puffy pillow never encouraged him to fully relax, to forget where he was. He pulled the sheet not to his neck but to chest level, secure under his armpits. He wore a t-shirt, but another layer between him and El was welcome. 

It was weird having a girl in his room. Even if it was El who for most of her life, though he wasn’t there to see it, wasn’t really a girl but a kid, like him. Short haired (no haired). Skinny and awkward in both body and mind. Miserable, petrified and trapped. Despite the pain, desiring attention and approval from someone she absolutely shouldn’t love. She didn’t love him. She was never that dumb.

Then one fine day, no warning just like that, she was his sister. His step-sister, his foster sister. It took him some time to get used to the idea, though he quickly learned it wasn’t unusual. He listened to what others said, asked around and discovered that lots of people had someone in their family who wasn’t supposed to be there. Replacements, perhaps, for the ones who _were_ supposed to be there but weren’t. 

Later, much later he could admit he was an asshole to resent her, to discount how much Hopper meant to her. Despite her sadness she tried hard to fit in; in an effort to not capsize their perpetually rocking boat she made herself small. Average. That letter telling her to live and be happy, grow up and move forward: she kept it under her pillow and read it every night before sleep. Took it too literally and didn't let herself mourn. Later, much later he could admit he was an asshole to be jealous of the attention she received, attention he didn’t want in the first place. It was too much, it suffocated him. Between the tall tales of the Byers clan and the reality of Mom, Dad and Jonathan he had been under the microscope for what felt like his entire fucking life. Even before he disappeared, died, came back to life, was possessed, killed people, nearly destroyed Hawkins, was exorcised and put together a hospital chart as thick as _The Great Book of Amber_ that Mike gave him before he left town. 

“It’s good,” Mike said, eyes in half-shadow, all that black black hair framing his face. He gave him a tentative, close lipped smile, the one that meant, _This is super important to me, I hope you feel the same way._ “I think you’ll like it. Anyway it’ll give you something to do during the drive besides listen to Jonathan’s music and have him be all concerned about you.” 

El didn’t make it easy for him, though.

“What’s that? Your sweats have a wet spot on them,” she said to Jonathan one morning at breakfast, shortly before The Move. Jonathan was hardly subtle: merry voices, bedsprings squeaking, laughter followed by silence. From his room he heard bumps and crashes, strangled sounds of pleasure, more peals of laughter and a hastily turned on radio. He never got used to it, but he pretended to. It amused Mom no end to watch his discomfort.

El continued to examine Jonathan. “Where’s Nancy? Did she sneak out the window again? I hope she left that striped shirt here. She said I could have it.”

El didn’t mean it. Or she did, but not because she was clueless. She liked Jonathan, who reddened and stammered, ran to his room to change into jeans. When he returned he switched the subject to the from-scratch pancakes he was going to make them this weekend because breakfast from a box was “disgusting.” But he could tell Jonathan wasn't annoyed. He liked El back.

"That's not's what's disgusting," he muttered but Jonathan barely flinched; displayed only fleeting embarrassment, followed by a knowing smile. 

And now El was in his bedroom, in their new home in their new town wearing grey and pink unicorn pajamas with white piping around a Peter Pan collar that he knew for a fact used to be Nancy’s. El told him they were. She wanted something from him but he refused to think about her, ask himself what she needed from him. Only chanted, _Go away. Go away. Go away_. All he wanted was to be left alone, for El to leave him alone.

“I can’t sleep. Max and I used to…”

“Forget it. Boys and girls don’t have sleepovers.”

”Even when they’re friends?”

“Even when they’re brand new step-whatever-we-ares.” His words came out wry and matter of fact. He'd been practicing saying what was on his mind while subtracting the hysterical edge, the high tone that signaled need. It helped to breathe, before he spoke.

That should be that. He’d made this point before, though never this directly. They didn’t share classes, were on different academic tracks; they didn’t eat lunch together. Their extracurriculars didn't overlap. He was forever and always AV club and fantasy art nerd and she was cross country, with the coaches eying her for track in the spring. Jonathan didn’t say anything negative or disgruntled, didn’t hint he was tired of playing chauffeur. He didn't need to. When he and Mom relaxed about El and him being alone in the house, decreed they were probably safe, within hours he'd figured out multiple ways to get home that didn’t involve a ride from his big brother. 

He didn’t share these ways with El. He left her to figure it out for herself. At breakfast, at dinner, on the weekends he forced himself to look directly at her, but his body rebelled. His stomach flip-flopped, his skin itched _wrong wrong wrong_ until his gaze slipped down and to the side. He learned to talk to her ears. She noticed, Jonathan and Mom noticed, but in the moment, no one gave him grief for it. 

That was that. El's eyes grew damp, threatened to spill over with tears. She stood up and huffed out. He burrowed back under the covers and studied the white light that washed his walls, cast inchoate shadows across them courtesy of his curtain-less window and the three-quarter moon shining through it. He'd learned that El wanted to cry, before she ran away. The knowledge should have satisfied him. Instead, it left him feeling contrite and grubby, though not enough to apologize or whisper her back. So he changed the subject. He spread his legs wide, for ventilation hung his feet out the sides of his crunchy sheet. He watched the shadows pulse in time with his ceiling fan, thought about anything that wasn't El.

Only, she returned scant minutes later, toting a pillow and a shabby, utilitarian sleeping bag: orange, grey and well-insulated. Hopper’s. She unconcernedly, ostentatiously rolled it out and arranged her pillow; squiggled inside and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.

“One hundred,” she mumbled none too quietly. “Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight.”

“What are you doing?” He inched his feet back under his sheet

“I’m counting sheep. I _was_ counting sheep being sheared, but I think I’ll count sheep being slaughtered. Politely slaughtered. There’s only the tiniest squeak of protest before the knife slides across their throats and the blood _gushes_. They never know what’s coming for them.” She said the last sentence with particular relish.

“That’s not how it works!” he hiss-whispered. Despite his intention to disengage, never engage he leaned over the edge of the bed, so he could look at her while he told her how wrong she was. “They’re supposed to be cute and fluffy.Gambol! Prance! Frolic! Y’know…over bushes and fences. Like happy animals who aren’t anyone’s dinner!”

“Oh really,” she said. Too late he understood she was teasing him, tricking him into conversation.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” she innocented back.

“Act all ignorant and unaware when you know perfectly well what’s going on.”

“Your mom says I’m a _quick study_.”

“I bet she does.” The sulk slipped out. He forgot to breathe.

She sighed and shook her head - _You don’t get it -_ hair shushing against her pillow, face overflowing with concentrated distress. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “At school yesterday, in Social Studies, I mixed up the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights. I don’t understand word problems though it turns out I’m ace at Geometry. Not to mention that I read at a fourth grade level and my ‘penmanship is only acceptable if I was an eight year old boy.’" It's her turn to avoid looking at him. "My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Brisby? The one who looks at me like I’m from another planet though _she’s_ the one with those pale, yellowy-green cat’s eyes, practically near her ears, and a fangy smile?” A pause to fiercely blink away a tear he pretended he didn’t see, sniff a drip back into her nose. “She told me that, ‘Considering my unique situation they’ve given me more than a fair chance to catch up.’ But they’re going to take me out of regular classes and put me in a class where I can get, ‘Specialized, individual attention.’ Where I can, ‘Take things at my own pace.’ Joyce and I are meeting with the principal next week. They’re threatening to take me off the cross country team if I can’t get my average above a C. I hear what the kids say. _Retard_.”

“Really?” He sat up. The sheets and blankets pooled around his waist. “But you’re smart. I’m sure you’ll catch up, if they give you a little more time. You just haven’t had a chance to study like everyone else. When I came back from the Upside Down, when that thing was in my head I didn’t exactly want to go to class and talk about oil in Venezuela or dissect frogs or watch that stupid Johnny Tremain movie where he melts his hand, meets Paul Revere and fights the British. Everyone said I’d come back wrong - that I was an actual zombie though it’s not like any of them knew the first thing about zombies. Had they ever seen _Night of the Living Dead_ let alone _Evil Dead?_ What the hell did they know? If I so much as mixed up my words or was one decimal point off everyone whispered and laughed. Soon I said nothing. I switched to the back row and doodled instead of paid attention. _Of course_ my grades went down.” He was on a roll, eyes hot and round with memories. “Mr. Clarke got on my case. He didn’t want to, ‘Pry or imply that everything wasn’t going well at home, but was everything ok at home, with my mom?’ He knew that, ‘After the _ordeal_ of the previous year it would take time for us to adjust, especially considering our _situation.'_ He knew I had to leave school for regular doctor's visits but maybe I’d, ‘Like to talk to an adult who wasn't family or a doctor.’ If I ever wanted to, I knew I could come to him, right? Mr. Clarke said that to me!” 

In the silence that followed he wanted to slap himself, appalled that by doing nothing but listening quietly in the dark from her place on the rug, where he didn’t have to look directly at her but did anyway, El had convinced him to talk and talk about himself. He hadn’t mentioned what happened with Mr. Clarke to anyone. Not Mike or Lucas, who would cross their arms, raise their eyebrows and ask, “Well, is anything wrong? Again? Still?” Definitely not Dustin, effortlessly good at school and bemused by anyone who wasn’t. Or Mom and Jonathan. The last thing he needed was for them to march to the principal’s office or lecture him on standing up for himself, remind him he had to maintain the family secrets they'd promised the government they'd keep. 

Back in Hawkins, throughout eighth grade he repeated what he'd convinced himself Mom and Jonathan would say to him, should he try to talk to them. If they ever found the time to talk to each other beyond pleasantries, whose turn it was to do what chores and if homework was being turned in on time. He worked himself into a righteous indignation over imaginary conversations. “Fuck it. Who cares about the assholes in this town. We’re not like them and you’re not like them either, Will. That’s a good thing. Also, you’re fine. Do you hear me? You’re _fine._ If you're not, and now that you mention it we see that you're not, you will be soon. We'll make sure of it.” They'd be sure to recite the family homilies. Being a freak was _good_. It was awesome to be judgmental and uncaring of the majority's opinion. Hyper-vigilance and paranoia, lack of sleep, not leaving the house except for work and errands, eternally poised for the next disaster was what it meant to be a Byers.

But after the Upside Down - after not days, not weeks, not months but years of the Upside Down - these stories didn't comfort like they used to. 

He wasn’t, he promised himself, like Mom and Jonathan. He wanted to fit in: in Hawkins; here too. If it was too much to ask that he be average, could he not stand out for things he couldn't control or understand?

“For people to see you. Not assume they know who you are based on a few minutes in school. I get it.” El said it softly but not hesitant.

"Go to sleep, El." He said it firmly but gently. To drive his point home he rolled onto his back and pulled the covers all the way over his head. 

But during their conversation, in the quiet that followed the space between them softened, became less charged. Not friendly, exactly. On the verge of companionable, as long as he kept breathing.

Back in Hawkins all the sounds inside and outside the house were familiar. In his room he heard branches rustling, leaves like dry palms rubbing together. There was the creak-groan of the floorboard by his door that he automatically stepped over. The toilet tank with the perpetually leaky gasket and faulty shut off valve. It started and stopped, released extended, asthmatic wheezes: a middle of the night ghost. In the dark, spring rain rushed through the gutters, built mud puddles by the side of the house that in the morning, when he was little he dug through. He tossed aside the worms that rose to the surface, searched for frogs and buried random objects: an arrowhead, a squirrel skull, a sticky robin's egg with a crack round its middle. If there was something inside he didn't break it open to check.

In their new home the landscape was beautiful.Everywhere the smells of wood smoke and cattle, sage and mesquite. He spent hours drawing the huge, silky sky, full of colors he hadn’t seen before except in a box of paints. The landscape was stark: three hundred and sixty degrees of dry land, scrubby and flat, green and gold. Low to the ground bushes were dotted with corn yellow flowers that he wanted to touch, until he stepped close and saw how stiff they were, how vigorously they clung to prickly branches and thin, crumbly dirt. The wind swept across the wide-open ground, rattled the multiple chimes that hung from the porch eaves until they sang in frenzied chorus. There were no neighbors to complain about a barking dog, a weed-choked lawn, fights that raged all night and into the morning. Dad shooting and missing the moles in their yard with his Colt .45. Nighttime in Hawkins brought wasps to his bedroom, crickets, deer and frogs to his window. Here, bats darted through the twilight. In the dark, furtive scrabbles emanated from thorny bushes. He heard distant barks, the occasional howl that set the dogs off. Saw blank, glowing eyes: blue, white, red, yellow. Animals with both scales and tails. 

_A good memory. Focus on a good memory. That’s what Joyce said would help me sleep._

Again he felt her thoughts. This time they marched multitudinous and ticklish: ants up and down his spine. Like a tapeworm they slithered into his belly button to his stomach, shrink-wrapped themselves around vital organs. He spasmed, quashed the impulse to gasp - a combination of surprise and pain.

_Max teaching me to skate. Toes curl in sneakers for balance, though she told me not to do that. Stupid uncooperative feet that won't stay where I want them. I'm supposed to balance my weight but I'm all wiggly, like Jello. Too far back, too far forward. Just right. Hold it hold it, center of gravity. A swoop of elation as I wobble a hundred feet, from one mailbox past a second to a third. A gentle curve and the suggestion of a dip before I skip off, dignity intact. Max makes it look easy but it isn't_

It wasn’t El doing this, it was him. Not with words but with pictures and sensations, emotions and memories that carried the words within them.

_Mike kissing me, his tongue in my mouth. Damp and warm, heavier and more insistent than I thought it would be. It's wet all around my mouth, almost to my nose. I like it but not having to wipe my face dry afterwards._

No time to react or process.

_Mom staring at a flickering television: blank. The keenest, sharpest sense of despair. My heart pumps and my lungs fill and release, faster and faster. My teeth chew my tongue and there's blood in my mouth, blood under my nails and my red and burning cheeks but I don't cry. Never never only babies cry. I want to slap her. I want her to wake up._

_“I hate you! I wish you weren’t my dad! You’re not my dad! Stop trying to be you'll never be!” Glasses and forks, dinner plates, spaghetti and meatballs soar and smash, smear walls and windows._

_No._

A push _away._ Hopper receded, replaced by a barrage of images that ruffled and snapped like cards shuffling, stuttered and whined like at the movies, when the film broke in two, everyone booed and whoever was in the booth hurriedly spliced it back together. He was spinning and falling, dizzy from the speed but there was nothing to slow his descent. He landed hard on his feet, chest tight and wheezy, shins protesting, in a meadow surrounded by snow capped mountains. A riot of wildflowers kissed his ankles, a moose mother and baby crossed a stream. Twin hawks with white tipped wings soared in a cornflower sky. The sun was warm but not hot, a perfect temperature on the back of his neck. It was like a dream; or that poster at the U-Haul rental place. 

It was no more than a minute. It felt much longer. He - _El_ flitted from thought to thought. She tried to dodge what was in her mind but always ended up in its sights. There was no hope for it.

He knew. He had always known. 

It was terrible: sneaky and wrong, something Zombie Boy would do, or Jonathan with his camera. He heard all about his brother's creepiness before it actually happened. It was exhilarating. When he snagged a seat in the first car of the highest roller coaster at Six Flags. The car squeaked ever so slowly up and up the hill before coming to a rest at the top, building anticipation for the drop laid out before them. 

“C’mon, Will. Let go!” Mike said. He released his death grip on his harness, raised his hands high. 

Only fear that El might know he was there made him open his eyes and break the connection. He came back to his room, its shadows and moonlight, panting, like he'd run a race. He forced himself to breathe deep, breathe slow - _one, two, three, four, five_ \- while he decided what to do next.

This sudden return of the supernatural, an exponential escalation of the tingle along the back of his neck should have devastated him.

It didn’t. He was fourteen years old. He wished he was ten. He might as well have been one hundred.

Why this?

Why not.

What if it's bad?

It couldn't be worse than what had already happened.

This was El, who shouldn't be here.

She wasn't going anywhere.

There was no meaning to anything that had happened, that had been done to him back in Hawkins. (To El too. Did he remember her at that moment? Probably not.) Only people, so many people dying for no reason. 

But maybe here, it could be different for him. This, whatever it was, already felt different. 

He closed his eyes. He wanted to send something in return. To balance the scales.

_I’m sorry I was staring. I understand._

_Riding bikes, flying down that big hill off Route 2. Three summers back, crunching over dozens and hundreds of cicadas: Biblical in their numbers, prehistoric and loud. Nancy seeing the four of us rolling over them, until their insides were outside, greenish-black streaks on grey pavement. “Eww, that's so mean. You should stop that. How is this fun? This is not fun!” All of them, even Dustin, laughing at her for being so prissy, pretending to be concerned about the fate of a plague of nasty bugs_.

_Poking through the woods. Crawling through dry cement tunnels, investigating falling down buildings, the creepier the better. Walking along the railroad tracks. Darting across them before the trains came. They seem close but they aren't, not really. Just close enough to get a warning whistle, an angry face from the engineer as he chugs past, not especially fast. Standing on the edge of the quarry. Who can edge out the furthest, stand the longest with their toes hanging over the side. It's Lucas, balanced on one foot while he quietly freaks out, wants to scurry away like a little mouse. He and Mike and the snake, lying torpid behind the Wheeler's garage in the cold evening air. "What if it's a copperhead? Or a water moccasin!" Throwing rocks at it from far away and closer. Hitting it over and over with big sticks; only figuring out too late it wasn't the dangerous kind. Promising wordlessly not to talk about it again._

Was that enough? He could show her something more personal and secret.Mom and Dad. The Mind 

No.

_Here. We’re even now._

No response.

“El?” First tentative then stronger, with a touch of anger. _Don't ignore me_. 

Still no response.

He was covered in flop sweat. A headache had set in, a steady grind between his temples. The sheet was still over his head. He yanked it off ( _cool air fresh air_ ) and peeked over the edge of the mattress.

El snored once, twice. She was curled around a stuffed elephant he hadn't seen her bring in, snuffling senseless words into her pillow. The elephant was a present from Mike. He won it for her from the vending machine at the arcade, the one with claw that never got you what you wanted, except that day.

“You’re my good luck charm, El.” She glowed, gave Mike one of those tentative smiles that managed to say everything, say too much. Max shrugged out from under Lucas’ arm and elbowed Mike aside.

“Out of my way, Wheeler. I want to try. What do you want, Lucas?”

It’s red and white with a shiny gold, pillowy heart around its neck. _You’re Elephantastic_!

Barf.

In the morning, when he woke up El was gone. She had rolled up her sleeping bag, taken her pillow, elephant and herself away. He saw her in the halls, between second and third period. Instead of pretending he didn't see her or know her he smiled at her, quickly.

_Hello._

She smiled back. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags for this chapter. 
> 
> A million thanks to sewn for the fantastic beta.

Jesse. Jonathan had a friend, and his name was Jesse.

One day he walked into the house and there he was, sitting at the kitchen table, eating their food. After that it was as if he had always been there. Like Nancy but different. The same because Jonathan was so pleased Jesse was there. He looked at him like every word from his mouth had never been uttered before, was exactly what he’d have said if he was quicker, wittier, livelier: more charismatic. If he was more irresponsible and self-centered: less interested in observing than jumping into the fray. Different because he felt included in Jesse’s glance, in his conversation. Unlike Nancy he didn’t subtly turn his body away or blink at him, friendly but abstracted, grace him with half smiles that were just that.

Jesse had wavy black hair that fell well past his shoulders with a strip in the front dyed purple. Sometimes he gathered it on top of his head in a loose topknot. He had broad, high cheekbones and dark brown eyes. They were deep set but not especially large, overshadowed by shaggy eyebrows. Depending on the weather his skin was either light brown or darker brown. When looked at directly his face had a hastily sketched quality: putty with a mouth, nose and eyes squished in. In profile it was strong: big ears, pouty lips, a Sam the Eagle nose.

One day Mom said to El, “That Jesse is an awfully handsome boy.” El smiled and shrugged. She thought it was a betrayal of Mike to say another boy was good looking. He agreed with Mom but kept his opinion to himself.

Jesse wore sharp-toed boots and tight jeans, faded, button-down shirts that looked really soft or sleeveless navy shirts with a contrasting band around the armhole. He wore jewelry: one flat, silver bracelet embellished with black enamel and one simple bracelet made of braided brown leather. A cord around his neck hung heavy but he couldn't, though he was tempted, peek down his shirt to see what was at the end of it. At home, with a needle and alcohol he'd pierced his ear four times, in each hole he wore the same kind of silver ring. More than once he thought about running his fingers along them, listening to them clink against each other. When Jesse smiled, it was big - wide and delighted. When he laughed he looked surprised, like he’d forgotten he could do that, though he laughed all the time. He flashed crooked, nicotine-stained teeth that had never seen braces. Here and there he mentioned girls he'd been with; once he thought he heard him mention boys, but he didn’t talk much about either. Not like everyone else did: seriously, earnestly, self-importantly, like nothing else mattered.

When Byers were freaks, which they weren't as often as they claimed they were, it brought them nothing but trouble. But Jesse taught him there were different ways to be a freak. The kind that Jesse was, that interested him.

His mom was a nurse who sometimes took the pills meant for her patients. His dad was gone who knows where. His mom’s boyfriend wasn’t terrible. He was present but not regularly enough to become a nuisance. He worked somewhere far away: an oil derrick in the Gulf, a boat in Alaska, construction that couldn’t be done in town. It was never clear to him where the boyfriend went or why he returned, but he didn’t ask questions. Didn’t want to expend energy contemplating other people’s deadbeat dads and unreliable dad substitutes, what it might mean for them. 

The last time he’d seen his own dad, Mom was brandishing an ax, screaming at him. Her rage and grief so powerful, so all-encompassing he got a flash of it, half-conscious in the Upside Down.

Jesse had a couple of younger siblings that he fed and helped with homework - as much as he was capable of, which on some days, on many days wasn’t much at all. He settled them into their beds, told them to turn off the tv by nine before heading over to their place or Jonathan going to his. His place being an old farmhouse by a stream, no heat except kerosene, nothing to cool it except a few fans. 

The first time Jesse visited he saw the Airstream, resting in a stand of cottonwoods a few hundred feet from the house. “The fuck?” he exclaimed. “That’s sitting empty, it doesn’t need work? I would've moved all my stuff in five minutes after I saw it.” When making his case to Mom Jonathan wisely never mentioned him; but he had been there and remembered where Jonathan got the idea.

Jesse was the one who suggested he go shooting with Jonathan and him. “He’s not in Indiana anymore. It’s better he learn sooner than later, and it’s already later. Don’t want him to end up like you.” He said it in a way that was word-for-word rude but his tone, his delivery made it just the opposite. Made it so Mom, suspicious of him from the very beginning softened towards him, even as she told Jonathan he’d better not pick up any of his bad habits. It was great he had a friend but she was _watching them_.

Jonathan was unimpressed by Jesse's line of reasoning, but not enough to fight him on it.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. It would be good for me to learn how to shoot better!” To be safe, he didn’t give Jonathan time to disagree. 

More than once, he day-dreamed that Jesse was friends with him, not with Jonathan.

Jesse was the one, the only one in those days who said things that made him laugh a lot, right out loud. At first Jonathan looked puzzled, it wasn’t _that_ funny; then pleased, or maybe amused would be a better word; and then curious.

“It’s been a while, since you were happy.”

“I’m not happy,” he said, unsure why he felt a need to correct him, like being happy was a bad thing and Jonathan was presumptuous, _rude_ to imply he might be. “Laughing a lot isn’t the same thing as being happy. It just means something is funny. Your friend is funny. Funnier than…”

“Me?” An apology flicked across his face, but Jonathan didn’t take offense. He looked at him, thoughtfully. “I’ve got to get better material I suppose. Now that I’ve got competition.”

He hung out with them at night, after dinner, when he was supposed to be doing homework. Not as often as he wanted to. He had his pride and didn’t want to seem too eager, give them cause to ask why the hell he didn’t spend time with kids his own age. Not after all those years of giving Jonathan low-key grief for calling him his best friend. Once he joked about it. “I’m just your little brother now.” Jonathan looked so guilty, like he’d forgotten about him despite the fact he saw him every day, he was right there. He felt bad he’d said anything; also smug, vindicated.

He sat in a funk of badly aired out weed smoke and listened to them play records and make tapes, page through magazines and books. Jonathan pretended to do homework, but he was in his last semester of high school. It no longer mattered. They talked in a lazy shorthand he typically didn't understand. He tried to look like he did, tried not to say something he thought was smart but that inevitably had them looking at each other over the top of his head, smiling, like he was five years old or wasn’t there.

He used to wish _he_ was Jesse. At the time, the desire didn’t make sense. Here was someone no better off than the four of them, his future as big of a question mark as theirs - arguably bigger. Perhaps, he speculated, he wanted some of Jesse's charm and swagger, his bloody-mindedness and thick skin to rub off on him. That must be why he thought about him, why he looked for opportunities to talk to him. In their absence, made up excuses to increase contact, despite their age difference.

He never admitted it to himself, that he and Jesse weren’t really friends, would never be friends. When the thought ballooned, threatened to take up so much space in his head that he could no longer deny it, he hastily sat on it, squashing it flat. But he always knew, deep down, that Jesse was being nice to him only because he was Jonathan's kid brother.

Years later, after he got in touch with feelings that weren’t related to the supernatural, after he truly understood he was allowed to have feelings that were simply about him and what he wanted for himself, he remembered Jesse and his low-key obsession with him. He figured out what he'd wanted from him, that it was more than friendship. 

In early 1986, though, he only wanted everyone to know that while he wasn’t happy he was _ok._

He was _fine._

He was dealing with it.

*

The first memories that he witnessed, became part of belonged to El. Next was Mom. Over and over he saw Hopper’s broken, resolute face. He saw, he smelled and touched and tasted alternate scenarios and what-ifs, rewinds of what she would have done differently, done better if only they’d known and had more time. Why was there never enough time? He shied away from these recriminations and bumped straight into Bob. A log cabin in Maine, a crackling fire and snow falling gently outside their window. He’d give up anything, everything not to have seen him. He was so much better off not knowing the details of what he’d done to him.

In Mom's head it wasn’t all bad memories. There were retreats to decades past, happier times. Her longing for these moments he immediately grasped. It was breathtaking to see not in faded Polaroids, details yellowed like old ivory, burned ochre at the edges, but like he was there because he was there how Mom used to be: clear eyes, an easy walk, a bright laugh. She was hopeful and dreamy, unafraid. He hadn’t grasped that she wasn’t born on high alert, poised for flight. At his age, at Jonathan’s age Mom was free from worries, free from child-sized burdens.

The third set of images came from Nancy. Initially, he didn’t realize it was her. The views were briefer, more generic. He saw her all the time but he didn’t _know_ her. She was Mike’s annoying big sister before she was Jonathan’s ubiquitous girlfriend, a member of the motley crew who had saved his ass more than once. What she focused on was different than Mom and El, less intimate, less sad. Nancy engaged with the here and now. She ignored the past, what might have occurred and what she could no longer control. Her actions kept regret at bay. 

_206_

He was driving in a station wagon.

_183_

He was studying in the town library.

_177_

He was at the newspaper, revived thanks to another government payout. A shell of its former self, but in those days what wasn’t? Nancy typed with resolve, each finger that hit the keyboard was a firecracker popping off. She paused only to glance at the red light next to the dark room door. Inside, someone who was not Jonathan worked.

_Her photographs are fine. I have nothing to complain about. She does what she’s told. She’s not in denial about what this town is, what’s possible._

In Nancy’s head it was quiet, focused and determined. It was cool and dry with a steady, background hum: tires on pavement, rotating at a constant speed. It wasn’t humid, swirling thick and sour with guilt and sorrow. He would have lingered but the views of Hawkins chased him away. The school hallways echoed, forlorn, as did the streets and parking lots, the shelves at the supermarket and drugstore. Leaves, branches, signs, dog shit, mailboxes and the letters inside them; traffic signs, beer bottles, lawn ornaments, circulars, trash cans, window glass, take out boxes and the food inside them fell to the ground - and there they remained. As Nancy drove through less familiar parts of town, the literal other side of the tracks, along streets he'd rarely ventured, he saw boarded up windows, ripped garbage bags spewing their insides onto the sidewalk and graffiti-tagged _For Sale_ signs. Stained mattresses and unsalvageable furniture had been left to soak in the rain.

That’s what Nancy’s determination was focused on: getting out. That’s what those numbers were: a countdown.

He wouldn’t have known any of this from her visits, two to date. During them she seemed fine. Perhaps frailer, a little brittle and distracted; but so was Mom and Mike was there. He didn’t look at Nancy more than once or twice. 

Most people, he was certainly no exception until he was given no choice, were happy to ignore what was two feet in front of them. They preferred to swallow down the weak tea of _All-right, Pretty good, Can’t complain_ rather than ask questions whose answers might spoil their day. 

“How's Nancy?” he asked Jonathan one evening, as they were clearing the dinner dishes. El was doing homework in her room. Mom was sneaking a cigarette on her walk to the end of the driveway and back. 

“She’s not bad,” Jonathan said delicately, deliberately.“It’s taken some adjustment. I’m not sure how much you’ve heard, but Hawkins has changed.” Jonathan lifted a stack of plates, forks, knives and cups from the table. His shoulders slumped forward the tiniest amount before he straightened them with an almost audible sigh. He only noticed because he was watching and listening for these very reactions.

“She’s getting used to it,” Jonathan said optimistically. “It won’t be,” he reassured himself, “for much longer. Any college would be lucky to have her.”

From a stranger, or so he thought at the time, he received a fourth set of visions (out-of-body experiences, waking dreams, hauntings, possessions: he didn’t immediately settle on a term of art). Extraordinarily vivid, but with so little context they slipped away as he witnessed them, water through a sieve. They were words spoken in a language he understood the individual words of, but was too inexperienced to comprehend at a sentence, let alone a paragraph level. It was like sneaking a peak at someone’s diary or trying to understand the conversations between Jesse and Jonathan. 

It could have been any hour between dawn and dusk. He saw an endless sky jig-sawed with grey and white storm clouds. A forest, but not the kind he was familiar with: a hundred acres, a thousand acres viewed idly from a car that zipped by at seventy-five miles an hour. This forest had no roads through or around it. Thick with birch, fir and cedar it stretched on and on, past the horizon. He couldn’t tell one tree from another, they had needles or they didn’t, but these trees he could identify. It was a forest composed of millions and millions of acres, a forest the size of a small country; cushioned, ringed by an endless expanse of snow, a thousand miles in all directions. The grey and white tundra mirrored the sky. It was riddled with the detritus from coal, diamond, gold and iron mines, construction and timber, the hundreds of colonies ( _ha_ ) abandoned decades ago. The one he was in was a holdout, an exception for special cases. He felt special all right.

He shoveled, pick-axed, hauled dirt and dug holes in the frozen earth; if he dug long enough he might reach it, the heat at the center of the world. He couldn’t sense it but he knew it was there. Like a dog he thought incessantly about food, though what was tossed his way didn’t resemble food and what little there was gave him the shits. Like a dog he thought incessantly about sleep, though his mattress - crawling with bedbugs, imprinted with the burnt shadows of all the bodies that had died on it - was nauseating, only good for channeling the frozen urine stink from the cement floor. _Sleep, sleep, sleep_ his body demanded though it was too fucking cold to ever truly fall asleep. At least the others had someone to curl next to and share meager body warmth with. He was on his own: able to communicate with some of them but they pretended they couldn’t. He was separate, a pariah amongst pariahs. He went days, possibly weeks without saying a single word. A while back he stopped reciting his name, rank and serial number; stopped marking the days on his cell wall and reminding himself he had people, a country to live for. While in the movies that gave prisoners hope, and the concept was hardly new to him, these days it only made him want to die faster.

He was too old for this bullshit. 

Occasionally, one of the men took pity on him and gave him a cigarette.

A fireplace, a radiator, a bonfire, a steaming cup of black coffee. A fifth, a whole bottle of Jack. He did not think about those.

An unceasing, battering wind, like nothing he’d previously experienced. It whistled down to him from the top of the world. He swayed on his feet, today didn’t fall to his knees but on more than one occasion had. He was less than half the man he used to be. He braced himself - feet wide and planted, knees bent for balance. _Don’t stand at an angle. Face forward or backward, never in-between._ His cheekbones and nose, his fingers and toes were numb, blistered red, scabbed black, swollen like sausages, itchy and burning. Congealed, the skin that develops in a cup of hot milk forgotten on the kitchen counter.

Each time he escaped from this reverie, this waking nightmare he was shivering and gagging. His stomach growled, his lungs had shrivelled tight in the cold. A new odor clogged his nostrils, one worse than the Upside Down: the bottom of a deep, frozen hole filled with every disgusting thing in the world. Ignoring his chattering teeth, he ripped off his blanket and patted his face, his arms and stomach. He turned on his bedside lamp and examined his fingers, counted his toes, fondled them and promised to never ever again take them for granted.

What he saw made sense eventually, incidentally, with the help of others.

*

PTSD: _A failure to recover after experiencing a terrifying event._ _An internal reaction to an exogenous trauma_. 

What Dr. Owens said he might suffer from, when he thought he wasn’t listening. A newish term for veterans of war and survivors of genocide; for children who had experienced civil war and famine, lived through disasters that caused the deaths of their families, tribes and villages. Their entire way of life.

“No,” Mom said. “It’s real. It’s inside him, in his _body._ It’s not in his head!” she shouted.

But maybe, just maybe, this go-round _was_ in his head.

There was an echo, that was the best way he could describe it. In the daylight, ghostly images were imprinted on his retinas. In the dark, they emerged inside his closed eyelids like photos from the developer. He heard reverberations of words he’d heard in days past. They made him feel like he was in two places at once; or not here at all, but elsewhere.

Like everything else in his life, it didn’t immediately make sense to him. He was never inside, never away from himself for long. Certainly not long enough to be dogged by others’ memories days or even weeks afterwards. Later, he figured out that was the problem. In the moment he didn’t catch most of the details that raced past him. Awash in the physical, cognizant that he was awake and worried someone would notice - it happened outside the house too - he perceived only the broad strokes of what he witnessed. Yet part of him remained vigilant: observing and recording, taking scrupulous notes. When he relaxed, this part nudged him, regurgitated semi-digested bits that should have been easier for his baby bird brain to digest.

Should have. The detailed memories were too rich. Seeing them in their full glory felt like eating Christmas fruit cake without a glass of milk to wash it down. Worse. 

He experimented with whether throwing up would get the images out of his head. Back in Hawkins he'd stuck his finger down his throat when he was full of slugs. Later, too, when the Mind Flayer had been vanquished but he wasn’t convinced, wanted to check for himself that he was empty. The Upside Down liked him. Would it let him go, just like that?

This aftermath, though, wasn’t physical as much as mental. It was the itch along the back of his neck but inside him, in a place he couldn’t reach. His head felt like a bicycle tire inflated by a seven year old, enthusiastically blown up and up, more had to be better. Resulting in him feeling every seam in the road, every pebble and rut. Each and every vibration, rattle and bounce filled his head, made it that much denser, heavier and louder.

It became too much. One week he snapped. He worried at his scalp, vigorously scratched, yanked out small tufts of hair. He rubbed and pressed his knuckles into the sides of his head, along his temples and eye sockets. Plugged his ears, ground his teeth, shook his head from side-to-side and knocked the back of it against hard surfaces. Until strange looks in class, giggles in the halls about the new guy being a tweaker, concerned questions from his biology teacher about whether he needed to see the nurse or talk to the Guidance Counselor forced him to better control himself. The last thing he needed, that Mom needed was another kid to stress about. He had finally escaped life under the microscope. He wanted to keep it that way.

He needed to let some air out of his tires.

_Feed his head with something else. He needed to fill his head with something else._

When no one was home, he snuck into Mom’s bathroom and examined the jumble of pill bottles in her medicine cabinet. He looked for simple words: Valium, Speed. A red pill to make him smaller and a blue one to make him ten feet tall. Mom smiled her secret smile and sang along, when _White Rabbit_ came on the radio and she was in a nostalgic frame of mind. He found old expiry dates and pharmaceutical terms: alprazolam, diazepam, nortriptyline, amitriptyline. 25 milligrams, 50 milligrams, 100 milligrams. Green, orange, red and yellow pills with numbers stamped on them. One name he recognized, Tylenol with codeine from when Jonathan had an impacted wisdom tooth. Mom filled the prescription, but after the first one he refused to take any more.

“I’ve got school, then work and they make me fuzzy. I can’t think straight.”

He took a handful from every bottle. Enough to cause Mom brief confusion, should she open them, but not enough to ring alarm bells. When he was sure she wouldn’t notice, he snuck back in and snagged a few more. 

In his closet, not obviously in sight but neither like he was trying to hide them, he stored two opaque plastic bottles: one of cheap vodka that tasted like gasoline, another of emerald green peppermint schnapps that tasted like cough syrup.

Small sips in the morning before school, before he brushed his teeth.

Bigger sips at night, before sleep.

He biked to the drugstore and asked for three bottles of cough syrup, stashed out of reach behind the counter. A suspicious look and he hastily downgraded it to one. The next times he went to the supermarket.

He was bursting at the seams with the regrets of others. They were rats in a cage, thrashing and biting for space. He needed to give his mind something else to focus on.

In the bathroom he picked up a razor, El’s because Jonathan was gone. In the shower the water ran fast and hot. El would complain he used it up. He skated the razor past the tender skin below his belly button, along his inner thigh to the taut skin that covered his shinbone. He pressed down too hard, at too high an angle. For a moment his skin turned bone white and shiny, unpigmented, before it filled with red. Drop by drop the blood dripped. In a thin stream it trickled to his feet, pink watercolors down the drain. The cuts scabbed over; he methodically removed them, careful to peel them off in a single strip. He put the crusty skin on his tongue and sucked on it. Sometimes he spat it out. More often he chewed on it, swallowed it. He was dotted with hairless patches and scars: pale blobs, the occasional ellipse and quadrilateral. Scars that would stand out against a summer tan but it was winter. They were easy to miss. 

Nothing - not the pills or the booze or the razor - helped for long. The anticipated, extended release didn't arrive. At night he lay awake, his head a merry-go-round, his heart thud-thudding from the joint he found in Jonathan’s place, a partially smoked one in a box with supplies for more. He took it outside, along with one of the lighters scattered around the house: yellow with the red Shell logo stamped on it. A strong wind and it took him three, five, seven tries to set his target ablaze, his thumb numb and sore from flicking the wheel. A couple of hesitant tokes followed by one big one (hold it in, swallow, blow it out: he’s heard that, seen it at school); followed by a smaller one because it wasn't supposed to work the first time, right? Dizzy with anxiety and paranoia, he replaced it just as he found it. Jonathan would see it was smaller and know exactly who took it. He’d get mad, try to chew him out and they’d have a raging fight about his hypocrisy. He sniffed his forearm, his shirt, his sheets. He knew, just knew they smelled. The tell-tale scent had wafted down the hall. Everyone could smell it, including El. The ceiling was spinning, he’d eaten half the casserole leftovers meant for tomorrow’s dinner. Mom would question what happened to the food. People - not just any people but Mom, once, and Jonathan, now - liked this?

How had this happened? Jonathan had friends. El had friends. He was in his room. Alone.

After a shower, he dropped his towel and examined himself in the full length mirror stapled to the back of the bathroom door. What he saw didn't impress him. He was made up of skin and bones, grey and rough, unpleasantly sharp. He was a scrawny chest, hesitant shoulders, twiggy legs and arms that were either too short or too long, he couldn’t decide. At least his hair no longer blazoned him the biggest loser on the planet. He finally had the energy to tell Mom to leave his head the hell alone. His feet and hands were weird, big, but maybe that meant he was going to grow taller. 

One evening he was conducting an assessment when Jonathan barged in.

“Even in the fucking bathroom I can’t get any privacy!”

“I knocked! Three times!” Jonathan protested. “When you didn’t answer I got worried. Dinner’s on the table. It’s meat loaf, better when it’s hot.” 

Jonathan walked out the door backwards, hands up, unable to hide his concern.

The next day he asked him if he’d like to exercise with him. “I’ve started using the weight room at school. It’s not so bad, early in the morning before classes start.”

He declined.

*

He helped El with her homework, helped her study for tests. After she told him about special ed he started tutoring her, though he pretended that wasn’t what he was doing. They weren't friends. He was still mad at her and didn't care how she did in school.

And he and El slept together. Sometimes.

It was easier at night, when they weren’t looking at each other, when it was dark and quiet. He released the inside and outside of his head, his whole body and let himself drift. He approached El with intent. _I'm ready to listen_. _I'm ready to talk about real stuff_. 

From her: Anger, pain and regret. A dead rabbit, a dead cat, a dead woman, dead men. Not peaceful but battered and bloody, limbs like broken twigs. Also strength, satisfaction. No fear. Blackest black punctuated by pools of liquid yellow light that she walked through barefoot, heel-to-careful-toe, dressed in white and glowing like some bald headed angel. 

From him: Anger, pain and helplessness all jumbled together. No strength, no satisfaction. A great deal of fear. It was hard to convey the emotions behind what happened with Dad. Threatening to tear up his art. The names that should start and end at school but followed him home, that started at home. The violence that hovered close but never touched his body, only Jonathan’s because he was always skilled at hiding, especially in plain sight, and his brother refused to learn. All that happened, sure. But what was worse, much worse was the ceaseless anticipation. Never able to fully relax because any moment the explosion might occur: after the mildest, most innocuous remark, or no remark at all. The Cardinals had lost a game in early May. Dad’s boss was fucking stupid (they were never not stupid.) He was eight years old and even the most hesitant, cautious eight year olds say careless shit, say exactly what’s on their minds.

_Boom_. 

The Mind Flayer found all the empty places inside and filled them, squashed what it didn’t need into the corners, where it was almost impossible for him to reach. After it was banished, not everything shifted back into place. He was permanently altered. Leaving room for this. 

He took all these thoughts - didn’t try to send images, just the feelings they left him with - and pushed them towards her, as hard as he could. 

_Please please please tell me it’s going to be ok, I’m going to be ok._

But she didn’t hear him. She didn’t see him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early inspiration for Jesse's character came from a story of Lucia Berlin's, _Teenage Punk_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised Lucas and Will friendship, and I'm finally delivering two chapters of it. Also, a note that in this story Max and Lucas have broken up.

In Lucas fashion there was no preamble. “Max dumped me! In the middle of the summer of love redux but for real this time because no monsters, not a single one. After I scored her the best, the loudest, the most amazing fireworks for July 4th. Totally illegal, they sounded like a jet taking off. Mike almost blew his leg off and shat his pants. So fucking cold. Said, forget the once a year fireworks, we were too young to be spending all our time together playing video games, like an old married couple. Get this. ‘We’re in a rut,’ she said. ‘The fun is gone. I need to see what else is out there, spend some time with myself. We’ll always be friends, though, I’m not letting you off the hook that easily.’ How can we be in a rut? We’re fifteen!”

“I think that was her point,” but Lucas wasn’t listening.

“My parents. No sympathy. I overheard my dad telling my mom he was right, she owed him. It was puppy love, would end in its own good time, leave it be. The more she questioned the harder we'd cling to each other. My mom said she only let it continue because I swore to her that I’d stay well away from Max’s house, Max’s family, would come to her if there was a hint of trouble from anyone, anywhere. This was serious, potentially life or death, wasn’t something to be a secretive, I know what I’m doing teenager about. For good measure she talked to Max too, can you believe my Mom talked to Max and Max didn’t tell me, and my dad shouldn’t get the notion she wasn’t ever in control of the situation. They're relieved we broke up! I sit at breakfast and look at Erica’s smug face and have to smile, pretend I'm happy or else she’ll make my life a living hell. _Oh Romeo, I heard Juliet dumped you because you’re so boring._ Cackle like the witch in training she is.”

“Were you spying on your parents?”

“Of course. I knew they thought the two of us were too young, didn’t know what we were doing and I wanted to hear them gloat. Salt in the wound,” he explained and that made sense.

“You should come visit,” he offered, not giving himself time to debate. The last time they'd spoken was in March, around his birthday. A stilted call preceded by a maternal nudge. “School doesn’t start until the end of August, right? It’ll be awesome. Really hot, so much hotter than Hawkins but there are these caves we can check out.”

“Yeah, sure.” Slightly taken aback by the offer, no Mike to complete their trio; last summer and months of radio silence waving their monstrous, ravening, stinky gooey spider legs. “Why not. I mean, I have to check with my parents but,” and his voice grew excited, confident, “if they say yes and they better say yes on account of how _devastated_ I am, that’d be fun.”

After the details were lined up - parental approval received on both sides, dates set, ticket purchased- he allowed himself to relax, to admit it: he was looking forward to Lucas' visit. 

*

The house was the color of wet sand: vinyl siding with a smattering of brick, a low slung single story with minimal square windows and an off-white, galvanized tin roof. It succeeded in its effort to blend in, be nothing more than an inoffensive blip on the landscape. In front, a gable roof rested on an overhang - more tin, undergirded with a long rectangle of wood and braced by half a dozen square-cut beams. No porch swing or couch, but a quartet of all-weather chairs and a battered charcoal grill. A tangle of bicycles to the right, as he walked down the stairs. The drying line not to the left but behind the house. In the drive, Mom’s car and Jonathan’s truck. The LTDmade it halfway across the country and, as if protesting their new location, gave up the ghost two weeks later. The truck was cheaper than a replacement engine. Jonathan was sad for a few days, guilty for much longer that his new ride was superior to his old one, albeit only slightly.

“It’s ok to want something for yourself,” he said one day, exasperated, as Jonathan picked up another weekend double shift to _make up for the truck_. “It’s not your fault your rust-bucket died. It’s not like the truck is new _or_ nice.”

When they arrived at the house, an improvement over what he was used to but with enough familiarities to make the transition smoother than anticipated, it had been almost a year since Chester disappeared. Days before they noticed. “That dog,” mom grumbled, “not a lick of sense.” Jonathan beat the bushes, wandered the woods, left out his favorite treats but they only attracted squirrels and birds. His absence upset them less than it should have, no room in their hearts to pay tribute to another disaster, mourn another death.

“Do you think I had something to do with Chester going away? Maybe I set a Demodog on him?” he asked Jonathan during the drive, hours and hours to dwell on November, for three years running the cruelest month. 

“No!” Jonathan was genuinely disturbed he was connecting these dots. “How can you think that? Put that out of your head,” he ordered. ”Dogs run away all the time. Chester liked to play in the woods behind the house. He was out early one morning and a coyote got him.”

“Do you think I had something to do with Chester disappearing?” he asked El, cozy in her sleeping bag on his floor.

“You don’t remember what happened to him?”

“No.”

“If you’re wondering, the answer is probably yes.” Matter of fact. Then more sympathetic. “At least, that’s how it is for me. I don’t want to remember the things I did, that the doctor made me do, that I did when running away from the Lab. But it’s hard to totally forget. It’s like someone is putting bunny ears behind my head, or someone nearby who I can’t see is staring at me, laughing at me. I tell myself I’m imagining it, but the more I pretend the more I think about the possibility.”

“I know,” he replied, but she saw it as him making polite conversation and the subject shifted.

“No more pets,” Mom said, when he mentioned that a new home deserved a new dog. He was learning it was possible in wide-open spaces to be both both hidden and free. No need to squirrel within four walls and a roof, create a nest of blankets and comic books; but a dog would make his big sky solitude more enjoyable.

Mom was true to her word. In the yard were two dogs. They weren’t pets; weren’t allowed inside. They were black and brown, thick and pugnacious, lean and brindle backed, barrel chested and pig eyed. They had strong jaws and solid legs. At least once a week, an unexpected arrival made it only halfway up the drive before changing their mind. “If they scare away the salesmen and the Bible thumpers, they might be worth what they’re costing me in food,” Mom said.

She let El and him name them, one for each. He gave El his turn; she gave him her dog.

“I like cats. Cats are independent and satisfied. Dogs are sad and desperate. They need me to make them happy. That’s a lot of responsibility for someone my age.” In town she found a stray cat - smokey colored with a white-tipped tail, bony and sidling, and coaxed it home. When the cat wanted to be indoors, she stayed with Jonathan. Mom could never say no to El, but she was allergic. 

He never liked cats: aloof and scared of their shadows. To have fierce, frightening animals protect him but also roll on their backs and beg him to scratch their bellies was deeply satisfying. They allowed him to reciprocate, do more than take take take. With them, he was on even ground. He rolled around in the high grass and let them lick his face and arms and neck. Threw a tennis bell and they never tired of chasing it, grappling with each other, competing to see who could reach it first. It was similar to meditation: throw and receive, throw and receive, count the seconds between each action and, as his head grew silent, set aside the crutch of numbers. A bonus: he needn’t worry that he’d trip or slur his words, that his breath would give him away.

Mom found him there one cloudy August morning: hot as Hades, the sky the color of a dirty sheet. After days of relentless sun, the taste of rain on a stiff breeze. He thought deserts had to be sandy. Camels, palm trees and oases; huge dunes to tumble down, get lost in, crawl hand over hand towards water that didn’t exist. But here was desert too. Gentle spring rains and fields of bluebonnets; big summer thunderstorms, the sky the color of bad dreams; a dry heat that baked into your skin, cooked you from the outside in.

He waved, beckoned and Mom sat down. Max, tongue lolling, forever angling for her attention, rolled away from him and dropped his heavy, square head in her lap. “No way, dog. Get lost,” she ordered with a shove but he didn’t move, continued to stare at her with damp, imploring eyes. With a sigh she capitulated, scratched behind his ears. _Thump thumps_ of ecstasy that stirred up a mini-whirlwind of dust.

“Hey there, stranger. Feels like I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“I’m here. I’m here most of the time. Unless I’m not.” Refusing to provide details of where he went, what he did: _You know, around_ _, doing stuff._ His only reassurance: _I’m safe, Mom, I promise. I’m not doing anything I wouldn’t normally do._ He enjoyed this new power, the control it gave him.

“You were always one for hiding,” she said, a joke that never made it off the ground, a downturn of her lips that she belatedly turned right side up.

“If by hiding you mean have I been doing regular stuff - stuff I used to do at home, in Hawkins - like sitting in my room, riding my bike, going into town, hanging out with the couple of people who don't think I'm a complete loser, sure. You got me. Maybe you’d know that if you were around more.” He attacked, quick and aggressive, gratuitously defensive. Max lifted his head and gazed at him reproachfully. _Slow down. Breathe._ “There’s no reason you should be,” he backtracked. “Here at the house. With work and your commute. I'm fine, totally fine, handling everything great and Jonathan is around a lot of the time and when he’s gone he’s not that far and there's El and…”

She stretched her arm and ruffled his hair, stroked his cheek quickly, before he could protest.

“You don’t have to apologize. I know what you're trying to say.” She sighed again, pensive. “I was hoping, I was planning to be at home more. I started out that way, if you remember. But work has been busy. Who’d have thought that at my age, with my experience I’d get a promotion, become _a manager_. But more money is good, is worth not being around as much as I should be?”

“It _is_ good. Much better than making less and still being busy. Let’s face it, wherever you go they need you. They just realized it much faster than Mr. Melvald. Which means,” he smiled encouragingly, “they’re more likely to stay in business.”

Her eyes sparkled, he could see the weight fall from her shoulders, how it allowed her to sit up straighter. “You mean it?” she asked hopefully. He couldn’t hear her; regardless he knew her thoughts. _I did the right thing and he sees it. It’s better here, fifteen hundred miles from that toxic wasteland, that beast in the cellar. He’s safe. A fresh start. No more bad memories to collect. For all of us. He’s talking to new people and he’ll make friends. You must give him time_ , _give him space_.

He’d heard it all before, as she drove to work and he dressed for school.

 _“_ I absolutely, one hundred percent mean it.” He thought of Jesse, his promise to pierce his ear as long as he swore to Mom someone else did it. “Your mom is pretty cool, but I bet she hangs onto a grudge like nobody else. I don’t want to get on her bad side.” Of the group he sat with at lunch. No D&D, he kept his promise to Mike, there was never another Party. These were a subset of art and theater geeks: boys; and girls who weren't girlfriends. His freshman year he was part of the crew that did lighting and sound, refurbished the sets. _Oklahoma!_ “Every fourth year it’s _Oklahoma!”_ Lorna informed him gloomily. “They rotate it with _Guys and Dolls, Grease_ and _You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown_. We can reuse the costumes and a lot of the backdrops. Plus, these are parent tested and approved. Good, clean, American fun.”

Lorna knew what she was talking about. Mom made a special effort to attend a performance. "It’s been ages since I heard these songs!"

She caught him drifting and frowned. “I do. I do think it’s better here,” he repeated, with greater conviction albeit a too-bright and too-smooth voice. Unable to maintain solid eye contact but it was sufficient to temporarily soothe her. This is what it must be like, he thought, to be Jonathan: hyper-aware of his family’s emotions, the places they’d broken and glued themselves back together, shouldering the responsibility to seal cracks he hadn’t made. No surprise he craved space of his own. His brother’s thoughts never intruded, but they didn’t need to. For him Jonathan had always been a picture book, easy to read.

“Oof, enough with you. Time to think about lunch. And dinner.” Mom shoved Max and he obediently moved away, wiggle-waggled luxuriously in the dirt, sat up and vigorously scratched an itch. “I’ll be checking in with you again very soon, young man. You’ll always be my baby.”

“I know.” Impulsively, he closed the space between them and hugged her. “I love you, Mom.” She squeezed him tight tight and _one two three four_ the tears came, wet on his neck. He couldn’t remember the last time he'd said the words to her.

*

Jonathan drove him to the airport, to pick up Lucas. He was taller and broader, as self-assured as ever and a tad smirkier. Unphased by solo air travel, fuming that a stewardess offered him a TWA pin. His voice was crackly: low lower high low higher. They checked out the caves, went mountain biking in Franklin Park. BB gun and sling shot beer can practice. _Ping. Crackle._ _Splat_. (“Did I tell you I got a bow and arrow, a serious one for Christmas? So sweet.”) They played a lot of video games and El was there. All less awkward and nostalgic than he anticipated. Gaps acknowledged but not dwelled on. Still friends, good friends.

On the last day of Lucas’ visit, Mom handed them brown paper bags: multiple sandwiches and bags of chips, drinks and candy bars. Jesse told him about a lake in the desert, a wetland where they could see water birds, the big ones, hundreds at once. Black and white egrets or blue and white herons but they should go in the evening. Or did he say the morning? When Jesse talked to him, he was often too busy looking to listen.

“We’ll be back after dark. Yes Mom, we have lights on our bikes. Yes they work. Anyway, it’s a full moon tonight, we’ll be fine. Don’t let Max and Lady follow us, they’ll scare the birds.” They waved to El. “See you later.”

The lake was ringed by high grass and driftwood. Rocky and slimy in the shallows, oozing with plant life, but as they slip-sided further out clear and cool. Late afternoon sun, low sun, almost autumn, time for school sun gilded the water.

The cranes didn’t come. Early morning it was. Plenty of crows though. No matter where he went, there they were.

They swam and fished, ate the food mom packed. Ham and cheese and a fluffer nutter for Lucas, the saddest, most revolting excuse for food in the entire world. Worse than chocolate covered bananas.

“Listen to this,” Lucas said, handing him his Walkman. “It just came out.” He’d heard a couple of songs on the radio before the album was released. Played twice an hour, he’d have to have been permanently asleep in a deep hole underground to have missed them; with Jonathan a few hundred yards away he and El could dance around the kitchen, air guitar and belt out the words without having to listen to his commentary. _Tommy's got his six-string in hock/Now he's holding in what he used to make it talk/So tough, it's tough._

The fact that Lucas was singing along, fingers snapping, shoulders grooving; didn’t need the tape, already had the songs memorized reminded him of Hawkins, of afternoons in the woods and evenings in Mike’s basement. Lucas brought him to earth. He was temporarily grounded, no longer ascending into the sky - pink to sea foam green to gold, like those Italian ice cream desserts - becoming one with the already visible moon. He was in the dirt: wet rocks knobby against his spine. The sun disinterestedly rubbed algae and bacteria into his skin, a post-lake itch.

He listened to the second side of the tape, not as memorable as the first but it rarely was, while Lucas took a final swim.

“It’s good, really good,” he said and Lucas was satisfied.

“I made you a copy. It’s on your desk, along with a couple of others you should try.”

He pulled two beers out of his backpack. It wasn’t difficult. Take two from the shed, put them in the fridge, put two cold ones in his backpack. 

Lucas was scandalized. “My parents don’t drink. They’d kill me if they found out.”

And he remembered, he’d never forget, years later the memories accompanied by a hot wave of shame, his purple hat and spangled robe, his declarations and intonations, his attempts to turn back the clock. Will the Wimp. Will the Barnacle. Will the Petulant Baby.

He shrugged. “More for me then. Wouldn’t want your folks to smell it on you. I forgot you share all your secrets with them.”

Lucas rolled his eyes and took an exploratory sip, scrunched his whole face and with a muted yowl stuck out his tongue, like El’s cat.

“This tastes like shit!”

It did, but that wasn’t the point.

“So have a pop. No one’s forcing you.”

They were halfway around the lake on a shallow bank, a smooshed down section of grass that sprouted amongst the rocks and pebbles. With the setting sun came a flock of high schoolers, ones he didn’t know: smoke and giggles pitched high, chicken fights, a bottle breaking, and then another one; a curse and a shout. Lucas shredded grass by the fistful, skipped flat rocks across the water. “There’s lots of talk about rebuilding. There’s state and federal aid and donations from charities, incentives to lure in new businesses, free money for people who move to town but most people are scared. They’ve figured out last summer wasn’t the first time, they’re saying Hawkins is cursed, the mouth of hell. There’s an end times cult that has set up shop outside town. Old Man Garfield - turns out he does exist - is letting them stay on his land for free, as a big fuck you to everyone. People can’t sell their houses. That’s why they don’t leave.” 

“But my mom sold ours.”

“Your mom isn’t like other people’s moms; or dads. She’s a witch. The not evil kind,” he added hastily, as if he would take offense. “Unlike Erica, your mom uses her powers for good. Anyway, Dad’s been offered a promotion, but the job's near Atlanta. He’s thinking about taking it. Mom wants him to take it. She’s got - _we’ve_ got family there.”

“What do _you_ want?”

“Of course I don’t want to move. I was completely and totally freaking out when my parents brought it up. You can’t move in _high school_. I’ve lived in Hawkins my entire life. Except for you, I’ve got no friends anywhere else. But Max and I have broken up. Mike and I still hang out, though not as much as we used to; there are new kids from other schools he’s become friends with." His voice tinged with bitterness, "Looks like Max isn’t the only one who thinks she can do better. And Dustin is Dustin. He’s talking about going to that math and science boarding school in Illinois, in January. They offered him a scholarship. Which has got me thinking, why do you have to be the only one to leave, experience something new? You said it wasn’t as terrible as you thought it would be.”

Like Mom, Lucas needed to be reassured. He knew what to say.

“It’s better than not terrible. It’s pretty good.” And it was almost true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A nerdy music note. Albums released by August 1986 that Lucas might've left Will: _Raising Hell_ (Run-D.M.C.) and _Eat 'Em and Smile_ (David Lee Roth). I think he keeps _Parade_ (Prince) and _Control_ (Janet Jackson) to himself, because that's what he and Max listened to. 
> 
> The tape Lucas and Will are listening to is, of course, Bon Jovi's _Slippery When Wet_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: Mentions of Billy Hargrove's white supremacy and terrorizing of Lucas, and abuse of Max. Billy is absolutely *not* the focus of this chapter, but he is briefly discussed by Will and Lucas. There is no redemption for him in this fic.

Taste aside, one bottle of beer drunk and he gave away his secrets. He lay down in the damp grass, with a shout expelled them to the sky, no take backs. “I think I’m psychic.”

He blamed it on the moon. It rose over the distant hills, the maples, willows and soapberry trees and flooded the land, highlighted every bush and rock, branch and leaf and blade of grass; cast inky shadows and turned the black water to molten silver. The higher it rose, the brighter it shone, the slower time passed: encouraging intimacy and the telling of truths.

Lucas was in the middle of chugging his second pop. He choked and did a spit-take out his nose.

“I know, I know. I sound delusional, crazy,” he said reflexively, though he didn’t think he was, not one bit.

Lucas didn’t deny it. He clutched his head with both hands, mashing the can against his temple. ”Have you been reading my mind? Is that why your mom packed me such a good dinner? There’s even an Almond Joy!”

“Jesus, Lucas.” He balled up his fists, ground his knuckles into the dirt. “We’ve been best friends since second grade. Of course I know what kind of shitty sandwiches you like. This is serious.” His voice trembled, he sounded like he was about to cry.

Lucas immediately dropped the snark. “So you mean psychic like your mom?”

“Am I getting vague feelings, experiencing the unexplainable but can’t back any of it up because it happens when no one’s around, requires Christmas lights and ouija boards and I’m at the morgue insisting the dead body half the town has taken a good look at isn’t my kid? No.” 

“If your mom had talked to us we would have believed her!”

He didn’t want to re-litigate the issue. His mom was kind of crazy, but only he and Jonathan and eventually El were allowed to say those words out loud.

“I’m sure I’m psychic because I’m forced listen to the thoughts of people I know, that you know and it requires no tools or special effort. It happens when I’m trying to sleep or taking a test,while I’m in the bathroom or sitting at dinner. Not you, don’t worry. It's been Mom, El and Nancy, a few others. Did you know that last week Nancy punched Mike, really hard, kicked him out of her car and made him walk to school; and El misses Max more than she misses Mike?”

“He told me that! How do you know that? She said that?” Lucas interrupted himself; first startled, then pleased and proud, though before he could explain further he was moving on. “What others?” 

“People from last summer. The Flayed.” Initially, he didn’t recognize them. The images were funneled through Nancy: a journalist and the editor-in-chief at the Post. A batty old lady who in the end wasn’t. Through El: Heather with her bouncy curls and eager smile, her sleek red bathing suit and excitement about her summer job. Billy. Not long afterwards he began to experience them without intermediaries. Ghostly, slippery memories looking for purchase. 

“I’ve seen Billy. What happened with his dad,” he elaborated and Lucas became very still. El had thought more than once about Billy and his mother on the beach, dressed in white. El felt kindly towards him, regretful and guilty. She had him jumbled up in her head with someone she knew. _Her sister._ Not Max but a brown-skinned, flinty-eyed girl he'd heard a little about but hadn’t met. He didn’t share her feelings, not after what Billy had done. Lucas brushed it off with a _Racist asshole_. _Max put him in his place and now he leaves us alone_. _Nothing I can’t handle._ But he was scared and furious, hurt and humiliated and they were thirteen and ignorant. They convinced themselves Lucas didn’t wish to discuss it further, and were relieved. At fifteen and marginally less ignorant he still preferred not to think about Billy, what he’d done to Lucas, Max and others, but if he was forced to relive those memories - why couldn't Billy's bad deeds have disappeared along with him? - he knew he didn’t have to regret what happened to him. Even if Max did.

A hesitation. He preferred not to reveal others’ secrets, especially not when he’d acquired them through involuntary deceit; but Lucas remained skeptical, Max surely had told him and, justifications aside, he wanted to be believed. “What Billy did to Max. I saw that. How he scared her, hurt her on purpose and was sorry…”

With a chopping motion of his arm Lucas cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it. Not from you. Not from _his_ perspective. Apologizing for being a racist, abusive, hateful shithead because he’s dying and scared about what comes next, where’s he headed. Too little, too late. And for the wrong reasons. He’s gone - and since it’s just the two of us I’ll say it - he deserved it and I’m not sorry. Not one bit.”

“I know.” Lucas glared at him, and from his place on the ground he wanted to curl into himself, abruptly change the subject he’d introduced. “Well, I don’t know, but I understand.” Wrong. It wasn’t the same. “I’m sorry.”

Lucas grunted and shook his head, annoyed that he continued to talk about Billy and Max, that he didn’t have anything helpful to say. “Let’s say I believe you, though I’m not saying I do, about having _powers_ ,” he waggled his fingers mockingly. “Have you figured out who or what is doing it to you? What they want?”

“No one, nothing is doing this to me. There’s no agenda,” and as expected Lucas scoffed. He sat up, spine straight. For this part of the conversation it was important to be at eye level, to project strength. “I knew that’d be your reaction but it’s true. I’ve given this a lot of thought. It’s been months and months and all I can hear are people’s thoughts, people I know. There are no lurking monsters, apart from the regular monsters in people’s heads. And I feel the same, I feel fine: no slugs or ominous, sibilant voices or unexplained changes in the weather or being too hot or too cold or not hungry or never full or weirdly thirsty. No unexplained aches and pains or flu symptoms or viruses. No creepy dreams or being stalked or sensing underground tunnels, overground connections or that I’m the unwilling vehicle for an extra-dimensional god to manifest in this world. It’s nothing more than an unexpected consequence.” He wouldn’t draw breath until he’d made all his points, didn’t want to provide Lucas a single opening to interrupt or contradict him. “Like with El. Do you really think her mom taking drugs when she was pregnant made her kid able to throw cars with her mind? There’s no A leads to B, no simple causal explanation. This is supernatural backwash left by the Demogorgon, by the Mind Flayer, by the Upside Down. Psychic residue, like in Ghostbusters. And I’m the lucky recipient of it ‘cause I’ve logged the most time with them. It doesn’t make any sense, but it doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen to me or anyone else. It’s not - _I’m_ not a harbinger of doom _,_ not this time. As long as I do no harm with what I’ve learned.”

He sounded calm. Rational and in-control. He didn’t lie, but neither did he speak the complete truth. It was the explanation he’d settled on, and occasionally he believed it. It wasn’t as if he were _chosen_ or _destined or special,_ he wasn’t a narcissist. Accident, pure happenstance: that’s what it was. If he’d been home Jonathan would have been picked by the monster. Or Lucas and Mike if the Demogorgon had showed up on a Friday, when they’d planned to spend the night.

He didn’t inform Lucas the only one he was currently harming was himself. With summer well under way he’d become more strategic, moved his cuts higher, clumped them together. Imperfect relief, he rationalized, was better than no relief. He’d become superstitious, his blood a sacrifice, propitiating whatever had put this in his head. The psychic residue of the Upside Down.

Maybe he was, apples and trees and gravity, a _little_ crazy.

“So you’re a regular high school basically a sophomore who unintentionally has access to people’s deep dark secrets. That’s a…”

“Shitty superpower.”

“What’s the plan?” Lucas pointed an accusing finger at his beer. “That?”

He thought of the collection in his closet, accumulated over months: his safety blanket helping him navigate the new world thrust into him. He’d continued to experiment, worked out a formula that wasn’t too much or too little, that enabled him to get through his days without falling to the floor, melodramatically clutching his head or jumping ten feet in the air when someone brushed against him. When he swallowed the pills down the images didn’t disappear, but they _were_ compartmentalized. His mind two rooms divided first by a sheer curtain, still jangly and loud, only the suggestion of separation; then a stronger and sturdier floor to ceiling pane of glass. From one room he could observe the other yet maintain distance. Watch but not listen, if that's what he desired. (Completely ignoring was never an option. You try passing a window, noticing an event of interest and walking away.)

He pantomimed nonchalance, took a long, flat sip of Lucas' warm beer. “Don’t go all D.A.R.E. on me. Asshole.”

“You’re damn stupid,” Lucas’ voice sharpened, the combative edge that easily took hold. “You're lucky I’m visiting, on company manners or I’d…”

“What? You’d what?” He put down the can and leaned closer. Strangely, his voice was also combative.

“I’d kick your ass, for being so stupid! You could get a hot girl,” in the heat of the moment he didn’t remember. “Ace all your tests without studying because you’d read the teachers’ minds and know what questions they’d ask! You could catch criminals. Profile serial killers or some crazy shit like that. You could be a real life Professor X and stop fascists from taking over the government. Instead of sitting on your ass, mopey and weird, drinking beer that tastes like piss and pretending it’s awesome.”

“Professor X is a creepy, controlling dad. Also, he's _not real_ but I _am_ real _and_ mopey and weird.” As he said it he knew he wasn't exaggerating, that they would always be defining character traits. “You said it first. I don’t like girls. _I_ _don’t spend my life wishing I could suck face with girls_. Plus, why is it stupid to like crappy beer and ok to invade people’s minds, even for a good cause? Didn’t we go over all this back in Hawkins. With El and…” he trailed off.

“Max,” Lucas said gloomily. “You can say her name. It’s not like I don’t have to see her every day at school. Pretend I’m happy being _just friends_.” He covered his face with his hands and wailed into them. “She’s going to get a boyfriend soon, I know it. Then what I am going to do?”

But they were talking about him and he didn’t want to change the subject. Not only because Lucas needed to move on, was in all likelihood literally moving on, should stop living up to his old nickname of Stalker. Now that he was talking about himself he wanted to talk about himself.

“What makes you believe I can do any of the things you suggested? I don’t have control over anything in my life. I never have! Did I make my dad be one of the town’s biggest losers and ask for my family to be perpetually broke, sad and scared? Was it my idea to be kidnapped and tortured by monsters, kill people and still have everyone at school laugh at me? Have Bob die, Hopper die, leave Hawkins and end up with El as a sister? All of this has been done _to me_. Like El but worse because what’s the point of seeing horrible shit, listening to everyone be depressed and stressed if I can’t help? _El_ tossed bullies off a cliff and destroyed a bunch of Demodogs and exploded the Flayed into little bits and closed the fucking gate that she opened. She took care of the assholes that were chasing her. But I’m a big hole of nothing. I’m useless. Any random person, living or dead can stuff their thoughts in me, like I’m a fucking garbage can. And there’s nothing I can do about it!”

Ain’t that the crux of it.

Why did he always forget to breathe? Extravagantly emotional, unable to constructively use words. If there was a better way to express himself than stripped helplessness, he hadn’t yet found it.

Here's what he didn’t tell Lucas.

One day he was in the car, dozing, and he heard her.

"Will Byers, Will Byers. Te veo. ¡Que triste! Que tonto. ¡Ánimo! **¿** Quieres mi pingüino? Los pingüinos dan los mejores abrazos."

He flailed awake, briefly startling Jonathan into the other lane. _No thank you! It’s very cute but you keep it. He needs you._ A car honked a warning before passing them: a green family sedan, unremarkable but for the whale shaped scratch on the driver side door. A moppet crouched in the back seat, stared out the window at him. Her eyes slightly crossed, magnified by thick-lensed glasses to darkest plums. She waggled a stuffed penguin at him. She was small, very small. Early speech, the kind of speech that adults easily discount as nonsense.

She was the first indicator, a new itch along the back of his neck, that the universe consisted of more than his reality: Hawkins vs. The Upside Down. A hole in the world that could be hastily stitched together, DMZ’d, boarded up, painted over and, when all else failed, blown up. An indicator that Hawkins was not singular but one of many access points - albeit an especially dramatic example of what occurred when the lines between this world and another were carelessly torn open. A data point that the unexplainable existed outside of Brenner's lab, separate from El. The law of averages meant that if he was correct most places and people would be invisible to him, and of those that were visible most he would lack the capacity to interact with; but it would be foolish not to search, to persist in ignorance, in feeling alone in the world when he wasn’t. 

He heard Dustin as if he were present: _The law of averages is a misuse of probability theory by those who refuse to learn math! Putting the time in, no matter how long and hard you look, doesn’t guarantee you a positive result._ But Dustin wasn’t present, and these explorations were a right brain activity. 

Breathless, blistering summer days. El in summer school, Mom and Jonathan at work and him with only three weeks of half day art classes at the community college. So he searched. He hitched rides, took the bus and biked sweatily over miles and miles, dropping into a dead sleep shortly after dark.

The three-story Deco theater with its stepped massing, recessed spandrels and paintings of ancient villages; its cobalt blue, brick red and mustard yellow geometric designs; its stucco medallions of birds and corn and rain clouds; its story of the child ghost who haunted the premises, disrupting productions and causing accidents. Was it truly abandoned or a glamour of some kind? The densely wooded section of park that opened abruptly into an amphitheater whose floor was carpeted in prickly pear, desert honeysuckle, blanket flowers and devil’s trumpet; that thronged with butterflies. An entry point to somewhere less homicidal than the Upside Down? The homeless people and their encampment, he felt rude staring at them but always did. Had they not washed up under the bridge, a last resort? Were they in reality there by design, pulsing with power that he’d see if only he looked closer, without fear?

For weeks he searched for someone, something to communicate with. No luck but nevertheless his heart eased. It was only a matter of time. One day he was searching and and he sensed it. Not a tingle but a tickle, not down his neck but along his ears and face. As if dozens of moths, wings aflutter, sought admission: attracted to the light in his head. But whatever it might have been, it had nothing to say and so he denied it entry. He learned he could do that, sometimes he had a choice. The edges of his consciousness were expanding but he pulled them back. Daily, he redrew the borders in his head. Added warning signs, high fences topped with broken glass and rolls of barbed wire. _No Trespassing_.

Before he could backpedal, explain that he wasn’t a totally hopeless crybaby cowering in fear of the supernatural, Lucas jumped in.

“But you aren’t a receptacle for just anyone. Who did you say you heard?”

“El, Nancy, Mom, the Flayed…”

“Not Jonathan or Mike or me or Dustin?”

“No.”

“People who have been in the Upside Down or were brainwashed by the Mind Flayer?”

“Sure. I thought about that. But there’ve been others. Strangers. This man somewhere ridiculously far away, in a freezing cold forest. A couple of others.”

An understatement. He was fond of them. 

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“No,” but that wasn’t the appropriate answer. Lucas wasn’t referring to his habit of lying by omission. “Of course it bothers me that I’m hearing more, that this…ability is expanding. Do you know how hard it was to concentrate on end of the year tests? And that was months ago! In a few weeks El will be doing better than me at school.”

Lucas huffed his impatience. “I mean, don’t you feel bad keeping this a secret, that I’m the first person you’ve told though it's been happening since last year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered you trust me, but I know why you’re telling me and not someone else. Like Mike or someone in your family, like El who is an expert in the woo-woo. Because I’m not here, I'll be gone in the morning! You’re pretending you’re fine, like you always do. But I know you’re not. It’s obvious you’re not. Your mom, Jonathan and El see it too. You’ve just trained them to not ask questions. They’re scared to upset you, in case your head spins round and round and you fly to the ceiling.”

“It worked for me before. Look what happened when I _stopped_ running.”

“This isn’t like the Demogorgon or the Mind Flayer. You can’t run away from what’s in your own head!”

“I know there’s a difference!”

“So quit your whining. Stop hiding from everyone.”

“I don’t whine, I mope. There’s a difference.”

“Sure. One makes you sound like a six year old girl and the other like an eight year old girl.”

“Anyway, I did tell someone. I talked to El. She didn’t help.”

“Why not? She didn’t believe you?" His eyes popped. "No way. Not possible.”

“I mean in my head I talked to her. I thought at her, the way she was thinking at me, and it didn’t work.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I tried a couple more times but it still didn’t work.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

Lucas started with a growl. “Forget company manners," and ended with a shout. "I need to kick your ass." Still sitting, he shot a leg out, to demonstrate how he'd do it.

“Go ahead and try,” he said; screeched, in fact. “You always want to fight. Puffing up your chest and telling everyone how stupid they are. Only you know what’s right. You’re such a fucking genius. You should be in charge. Not just of your own life but everybody else’s. Let’s go ahead and fight!”

“Will, c’mon," contrite, placating. "I didn’t mean it. You know I get excited, I was only saying that because…”

“You think I’m a helpless idiot who can’t tie his own shoes without someone’s help. Get in line, everyone thinks that.”

He picked up a stick and threw it at Lucas. They were only a few feet apart but it veered right, made no contact. Lucas smirked, quick and faint but he did. He saw it. So he picked up a rock and winged it at Lucas’ head. He ducked but not fast enough. It bounced off his shoulder, clipped his jaw on its return to earth. In the moonlight he saw the jagged, red scratch it left, the dirt embedded in it. 

Holy shit. He cringed and Lucas popped up, raring to go.

“I’m sorry!” he yelped. “I didn’t meant it. Seriously, I’m really sorry!” He lay down and lifted his arms and legs, dead bug style. “You won. _Uncle._ Whatever you want me to say, I’m saying it. I suck. You’re awesome. You know and I know you’d win a fight no problem and my fragile ego can’t take it. Have mercy. I'm an idiot, a moron, a disaster. You _are_ a genius and should be in charge of me.”

Should he be embarrassed that he avoided a fight? Threw the first stone and then swore he didn’t mean it? Probably, but he didn’t have to be psychic to know the outcome. He would charge headfirst, aiming to tackle Lucas and then punch him. Or something like that. Assuming he made it that far, didn’t trip over his feet or slip on the wet ground, the fight would be over before it started. Lucas would flip him hard, pin him to the ground with a neat forearm to his diaphragm. He'd boast about his karate lessons but he’d miss it for the pain in his back, his flaming face, the sick-sour roiling of his stomach.

He would have continued in this vein for minutes more but Lucas had heard enough. “Ugh! Stop talking. Stop groveling. I don’t want you to apologize. I know I’m awesome. And, though you seem to have forgotten, you’re not so bad yourself,” Adrenaline still coursing but with nowhere to go, he punched the air, _one two one two_ , lifted a bent leg high in a sloppy crane pose: half Rocky, half Karate Kid, “Though I agree with your brother. You should think about doing an organized sport, getting out of your head a little. It’s noisy in there.”

Lucas had discussed him with _Jonathan_? _Jonathan said he should be more athletic?_ “You want me to to join the football team? I hear they’re looking for a mascot.”

“Not good enough.”

“What then? Tell me and I’ll do it. Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Sure.” Why not? He’d ask him to take up cross country with El or, if he wanted to humiliate him, basketball or baseball. Look in Max’s head or plant subliminal suggestions to his parents about the move; promise not to drink and bike and he’d say sure, he'd make an effort but he wouldn’t be able to accomplish any of it except the last one and that would be that. 

Lucas stopped goofing. A moment of silence, while he considered. A decisive nod.

“I want you to talk to El. For real this time.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Te veo. ¡Que triste! Que tonto. ¡Ánimo! ¿Quieres mi pingüino? Los pingüinos dan los mejores abrazos._
> 
> I see you. So sad! So silly. Cheer up! Do you want my penguin? Penguins give the best hugs. 
> 
> (Thanks to R. for double-checking my rusty Spanish.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: In addition to the tags above, a homophobic slur and period typical references to mental health.

Long distance was expensive. School was boring but time-consuming. It took three weeks for Lucas to check in.

“You didn’t talk to her yet? After all this time! You liar! You swore that you’d. I believed you when you said. You owe me!”

“I tried to talk to her; but it’s harder than you think. And there was school and stuff.” Skeptical silence. “I didn’t think you cared anymore.” An outraged howl. “It’s not like you talk to Erica about your problems.”

An impatient sigh. “Please, that’s a totally stupid comparison. I don’t have superpowers, and Erica has all the compassion of a rattlesnake. Plus, she’s eight.”

“Eleven.”

“Whatever,” Lucas growled. “Don’t confuse the issue with your _words_. I’ve got your number, Will Byers. You’ll say anything to throw the wolves off your scent.” Then paused, momentarily taken aback by his hyperbole before plowing relentlessly forward. “Talk to El, or I will. Eight days. I’ll give you that long. Only because I have to wait for the cheap rates and I have a church thing most of the weekend that Mom will skin me alive if I avoid again. If _you_ avoid _me_ , I’ll assume that you still haven’t told El, and I’ll fill her in with _all_ the gory details.”

He’d left out most of the gory details. Less for El’s sake than for his. 

“I promise! You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he squeaked.

“I didn’t know you were so slippery, Will.” Lucas’ voice dropped half an octave, took on what they both used to believe was a menacing tone. “The clock is ticking.”

*

He couldn’t talk to El until he had more tangible evidence: that was the justification he’d used after Lucas’ visit to avoid talking to her. Sure, El had the sneaky mind powers, but she could back them up with telekinesis and superhuman strength, with abilities that enabled her to do good, forced people to admire her more than they feared her. What did he have? _I hear you_ , _I see you, I know you better than I should. I’ve kissed your boyfriend. I’ve cried your tears for your dead father, your absent mother. I know the sound of neck bones shattering, the giddy relief that I’ll live to see another hour._ It didn’t matter that his Sophomore year was just under way. He skipped after school, skipped last period, skipped after lunch. He made his way deeper into the city, then to the other side, where there were plenty of spaces with potential in the no longer relevant south side of town. Formerly stately, currently graffiti-encrusted, vermin infested, boarded up buildings: a school, a hospital, a church, a four story Victorian that wouldn’t have been out of place in the garden district of New Orleans. Places he'd ensconce himself for an hour or three. Buildings that gave off an aura, indigo shading purple shading violet, of sadness and mystery, of being unwillingly, unwittingly left behind.

He sat on wide, stone steps with banisters that curled at the ends like scrolls. On metal steps speckled with rat turds and rust, lit from above by an undamaged skylight. Light played off gold-colored walls marbled with mold, gave illusory depth to a series of black fleur de lys painted along the stairwell. There were battered teachers’ desks in classrooms with dusty chalkboards covered in white and yellow and blue scribbles. Student work - water-stained, faded to indecipherable - was clipped to wall-to-wall, shoulder-high strings; they rustled in the breeze drifting through the broken windows, the cracks in the walls. As if everyone had walked out one afternoon and failed to return the next day.

Spine straight, knee tick beating a nervous rhythm, he resisted the urge to check his watch.

Nothing happened. Not a murmur, a rustle or whisper, not a tickle or an itch. Nothing continued to happen and as Lucas sweetly reminded him: time’s a-wasting. So he switched locations more frequently, switched to sitting with crossed legs; then hands on knees; then eyes closed. He breathed in damp, grease and dust; mice and urine and the sweet-sick smell of rot. Rotting wood, machinery, paper, paint, drywall, fabric, pipes, and underneath it all, something more organic. Not simply food.

He learned he wasn’t alone. These supposedly deserted areas were anything but. Strangers leaked from eyeless buildings, oozed from alleys blocked by dumpsters, crouched in corners he thought were unoccupied. From the corners of his eyes he saw them, but knew enough to avoid eye contact, look like he had purpose. It wasn’t unusual for him to be here, even if _here_ was a claw foot bathtub that hadn’t seen water in decades, placed smack in the middle of an empty room carpeted in newspapers. 

He didn’t fool anyone. He was a rabbit in the woods, and as soft and smart and dangerous as one. He was offered drugs. He was asked if he needed a place to crash. He was more directly propositioned. And he was laughed at.

“Hippie freak.”

“Junkie loser.”

“Faggot.”

He didn’t let them chase him away, though he was obviously frightened, wishing he was a little older, had his own car so he could have brought one of the dogs. He didn’t let them chase him away though nothing was happening but it would soon, if for no other reason than he couldn’t bear to search any longer with no results. This was it, this had to be it. He didn’t select this place at random, from the very beginning he felt there was something special about this neighborhood. He was sure he did. Like Mom, he needed to stick to his guns, scoff at stuffy notions like Common Sense and Rationality. True, he was no longer hearing anything special or new, nothing with potential; but if he left he would miss it: his moment. He didn’t let the strangers chase him away though every few seconds he had to marshall his thoughts like stray cats or runaway gerbils, like the newspapers, plastic bags and broken hypodermic needles rolling down the street. _Losers,_ he thought. _Assholes,_ _I’m staying. I have purpose, a mission. You can’t hurt me. I’ve dealt with so much worse than you. You have no fucking idea where I’ve been,_ what _I’ve been._

Six days after after Lucas’ call, his deadline looming, he was sitting on the splintered front porch of that Victorian when a loser leading a group of lesser losers stepped through a gap in the iron fence and yanked him into the dirt. He was dragged through half-dead, spiky bushes, the not-quite-wide enough gap in the fence and deposited on the sidewalk. Where they poured beer over him and as he jumped up, spluttering and puffing up his scrawny chest, trying his best to look bigger, stronger,unphased, knocked him flat and delivered swift kicks to his ribs. God knows what else they might have done to him in the middle of the sidewalk - stolen his wallet, deposited him in a dumpster, beat him with a tire iron, set him on fire - if a police car hadn’t rolled down the street. The cops didn’t leave their car but the flashing lights, the slow roll and blast of _Hey!_ from the loudspeaker was enough to get them moving, slowly then barely faster, unconcerned and jeering. He crawled to hands and knees; used the fence to come to standing; limped in the opposite direction. Nostrils leaking, head spinning, covered in sticky smelly beer that he belatedly understood had been used as an ashtray he hobbled onto the bus. His shirt was torn. His arms and legs bruised, splattered with welts, scratches and blood from where they’d scraped along the jagged edges of the fence. His ribs ached. _What if they were cracked? How would he explain it to Mom?_ Brown, wet spots covered his shorts in the worst possible places. His fellow passengers gave him wide berth.

As soon as he could he got off and walked home, still miles away, marinating in a new kind of humiliation and self-loathing, with each step working up a righteous fury. _Stupid useless shitty powers good for nothing but making me a laughing stock. Nothing has changed will ever change. Driving me nuts and what the fuck am I doing, why am I doing it why can’t I let this go. What is wrong with me what is wrong with me what is_ …

Only El was home, he wouldn’t have walked through the front door if she had company, sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of homework. He was head-to-toe slick with sweat, panting like Max and Lady on a hundred degree day. Gulped down glass after glass of water while the tap ran too warm. He stripped off his dirty smelly t-shirt and buried it at the bottom of the trash can. El was his sister, she could see him with his shirt off when it wasn’t totally necessary, like for gym or swimming. He examined his ribs; already a bruise had blossomed just above his liver. Still radiating heat, he opened the fridge door and leaned as far in as he could, resting his cheek on a loaf of bread. When he began to shiver he squiggled out, closed the door and leaned against it; looked at El with what what he told himself was nonchalance but knew in his heart was defensive, dejected pride.

El nodded at him with soft eyes: in silent recognition, in solidarity.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “You probably won’t believe me, but it’s true.”

*

“Anything?”

“No.”

“You need to concentrate.”

“I am concentrating!”

“Maybe with a blindfold? Like…”

“I remember.”

They practiced in El’s room. Her room was half of Mom's, sectioned off by dry wall put in place by Jonathan. El had the door, Mom came into her part of the room through her bathroom.

“Why would I need more space than you?” Mom asked her, matter-of-fact. Her face was calm, opaque. But they could see what was behind it. A smaller space meant more opportunities to ignore who could be filling it. Once, Jonathan and El talked about it.

“My dad really liked your Mom,” El said from her bucket seat in the back of the truck, seemingly out of the blue but he knew it was the old-time country on the radio: it reminded her of Hopper. Jonathan was in the passenger seat because he was driving. “It’s time you learned,” Jonathan said, “I won’t be round the corner forever.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

Jonathan looked at her in the rear view mirror and smiled, like they were both sharing the same fond memory. But they weren’t. “She liked him too. They made a good team.”

He didn’t join their conversation. It was raining, only a mist verging on a drizzle but the lights from oncoming cars, the beat of the windshield wipers made him nervous, which in turn made him more likely to pop the clutch; or worse, stall. It was good to have the excuse. When he saw how devastated Mom was and realized why, no mind-reading powers required, he felt terrible for her. But. He couldn’t imagine Hopper in their house, not back in Hawkins and certainly not here. Bob made an effort to occupy minimal space. He made himself amenable, took care to suggest and ingratiate. He never took offense, even when Jonathan ignored him or laughed at him. Hopper was the opposite. Not just big but huge, and eager that everyone acknowledged that _he_ was in charge. At a perpetual simmer, leaving a person to worry when and why and how he’d boil over. Mom might have seen a different side of him but he hadn’t. Not when he was conscious.

El’s room wasn’t fancy, decorated. Not like he assumed a girl’s room would be, like he vaguely remembered Nancy’s. It wasn’t even like Jonathan’s or Lucas’ or Dustin’s with their posters, wall hangings, books, photographs, records and tapes, comic books and action figures, dozens of random objects that held significance they were reluctant to share with others.

El had Jonathan’s old green chair and quilts from Hopper’s cabin. In a bookcase were a bunch of middle school paperbacks - cheerleaders, babysitters, camp counselors - that Nancy had dug out of her basement. A couple of collages Max had made for her. An Indian print covered card table that was supposed to be her desk but that she rarely used. A six-photo frame hung on her wall: her mom and aunt, her real mom, before Brenner turned her into a vegetable; Hopper; the Party, him standing at the edge looking seasick; her and Mike; her and Max; and the dogs. Pride of place went to the television that was only turned off when she wasn’t in the house. It sat across from her bed on top of the card table, legs bowing under the weight. At bedtime she turned the volume down; the screen flickered past midnight, when it turned to black and grey static, and into the morning.

After school it was Scooby Doo and G.I. Joe, followed by 1960s sitcoms. They, of course, could never afford cable. Elizabeth Montgomery, her witchy button nose and idiot husband. Barbara Eden prancing around in silk genie pyjama pants, a bra and a headdress; JR from Dallas her idiot boyfriend who she called _Master_. El loved the idea of shrinking herself and living in a painted glass bottle high on a shelf. “So pretty and cozy,” she’d murmur, “all those cushions,” while he rolled his eyes and thought: _Cozy like a cage._ She loved watching their supposedly wacky hijinks; insisted she wasn’t bothered that Samantha and Jeannie pretended to need men’s permission to use their powers, were happy being the magical equivalent of Mike’s mom. But by the end of the hour she’d turned wistful and pensive, repeatedly sighing: big gusty sighs that blew the hair out of her face.

They sat cross-legged on the floor on her fluffy pink and purple rug, another hand-me-down from Nancy. In concession to his amateur status, the volume on the television had been turned down. He kept his back to it. Scarves across their eyes, they held hands. Like sixth grade girls at a sleepover all they needed was a Ouija board. He didn’t mention it for fear that her eyes would sparkle and she’d dig one out from under her bed.

El unknotted her scarf - brown and black horses on a green field - and tossed it in his lap. “I don’t understand,” she huffed. “I’m not getting anything from you. Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?” Slowly, he unknotted his own scarf - white polka dots on a navy background - wadded it up and chucked it at her, the ends unfurling and draping over her thigh. He sighed, big and gusty, his bottom lip covering his top one, the tips of his hair fluttering. 

The moment he’d been dreading, that he’d tried his best to head off. El phrased it as a question but the expression on her face, full of doubt and something negative, judgment or scorn, made her words sound like a taunt.

It wasn’t his intention to describe to her exactly how much he saw, how intimate his visions were: simultaneously in her body and his own, like they were joined at the forehead, hands on each other’s shoulders, breaths mingling. But her doubt fizzed his blood. His heart suddenly too big for his chest. This three times a week practice in her room, her enthusiastic suggestion and his reluctant assent, was ostensibly about him. It was meant to help him focus, to learn to sift through the chaff and select a worthwhile voice, to practice staying longer, inside, to observe more while he was there. The theory being this would teach him control, prevent the memories from crashing back, wave after wave bringing him to his knees at the most inopportune moments. Over the weeks, without his permission, it had turned into a different exercise: determining whether his powers could spark hers. “I think they’re not gone but sleeping,” she said. “It’s like when Joyce’s car battery dies and Jonathan has to give her a jump.” Such yearning in her voice that he couldn’t deny her, though he was almost positive that wasn’t how they worked. 

When he’d come back from the Upside Down, from being possessed by the Mind Flayer, he and Mom had talked a few times.

“How are you feeling?”

“Ok.”

“You sure? How’re you sleeping?”

“Ok. Some nights are bad, but more are ok. Better - easier - than I thought it would be.”

“That’s good.”

“It is.”

“You know what we should do? Stop for ice cream.”

“A sundae. With nuts and chocolate syrup and whipped cream and no bananas.”

Three times a week was a lot of time to be spending with someone hyper-focused on the supernatural. With a brand new teenage sister who didn’t fully understand boundaries or tact, whose vision of normal was miles removed from his. From anyone's. 

“Did I imagine what?" he snapped. "That every night you read that letter from Hopper like it’s the first time? Fold it in new ways, so the creases don’t tear?” Her hands clenched, she opened her mouth to speak but he barrelled on. He wanted to tell her more about herself. “That your coach has repeatedly told you that need to pace yourself better, save some gas for the last half mile. You can’t, though, you’re too excited and nervous. You don’t care about winning; all you want is to run until you can’t hear anything but the pounding of your heart, until every regret you own is sweat clean away.” She pressed her fingers in her ears but he didn’t pause; he raised his voice. “That you wonder if you’re being punished for the things Brenner made you do, what happened afterwards in Hawkins. That you make mental lists of what you’d be willing to do, the bargains you’d make to get your powers back, get Hopper back, get your Mom back. You’re right, I must have imagined all that.” Her eyes darkened. He moved in for the kill. “Or maybe I did see all that. I did - I still do see you. But you refuse to acknowledge the possibility because what it means for you: that you used up all your mojo back in Hawkins and deep down you know you’ll never get it back. You’re pissed that I’m the one who’s special now, not you!”

Jesus Christ. As if he asked for any of this bullshit, believed these powers made him important or special. Specially stupid, perhaps. Unlike his hair and eye color, his drawing, his last name, his old friends, his love of secrets and solitude, of wakeful dreaming, they didn’t define him. The powers were like El: new and unexpected; unrequested, forced upon him; impossible to ignore or send back.

El’s eyes narrowed and lasered in on him, like they used to when she was opening a window or turning on the lights, encouraging a scary man to cough up his intestines. They flicked to the door while she debated storming off. But they were in her room, she wouldn’t retreat. She settled for a dismissive tongue click, an unconcerned toss of her head. “You’re being an _asshole_ ,” for years she said curse words like they were bad words, “but I know you don’t mean it. You’re trying to send me away, force me to ignore you. So you can run to your room and sulk; tell yourself you’re all alone, nobody cares for you.”

“Oh yeah, what makes you say that?”

“Your bottom lip is wobbling. You puffed up while you were shouting at me, but afterwards shrank into yourself, like a balloon that’s lost all its air. Your eyes are big and round and bright. Are you going to cry? It’s ok if do you. You should be scared and you’ll feel better if you cry. I do.” Said in her little girl voice, that stilted cadence so at odds with her practical, perceptive words.

When he stopped watching himself yank tufts from her rug and looked at her, she gave him one of her half-smiles, more eyes than lips. Her face a mixture of compassion, melancholy and impatience that, he suspected, added up to pity. It was her turn to explain - slowly and patiently, with small words - how the world worked. “I might not have powers for now,” she said, then corrected herself. “I might have lost my powers for good. That doesn’t mean I can’t be of use. I know how to make powers work for me, which means I’m the best person to help you. I know you know that. It’s why you came to me; that and Lucas forced you.”

“He did.” There was no point in denial. “But I’m glad I did, it’s nice be able to practice with you. You were so good at using your powers, always knew how.”

“You expect too much. You’ve been doing this for a few months; I had years. And for years nothing happened, though I had training. I had - what’s the word, a reason to keep trying?”

“Encouragement? Motivation? Incentive?”

“Incentive,” she hissed. “Yes, that’s the word he used. One day a present, the next day a punishment. You don’t have that.”

What a fucking creep. El’s information about her past came out in dribs and drabs; it was too much for any of them to process at once.

“You’re saying I don’t want it badly enough?”

“I’m saying you don’t have outside fear, which is good; but that also lets you think too much. Which is bad.”

“Maybe. But c’mon, I think you’re selling yourself short. You’re just really good at it. A natural.”

“I _was_ really good,” she said, aggravation creeping into her voice. “That’s over. You said it, you’re the special one now. Which makes no sense ‘cause you can’t use the tiny bit of whatever it is you’ve got.” Immediately followed by wide eyes. Her palms smacked her mouth and she mumbled into them.

“Huh?”

Her hands fell into her lap. She wrung them and stared at him, until she saw something in his expression that reassured her. She leaned forward and clutched his hands. “Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes but it’s fine, more than fine.” And for a change he said it not to make someone feel better but because it was entirely true. “I was angry at you. You’re allowed to be angry back. I can take it. I’d say worse things than you if our positions were reversed. ‘It’s not fair. He’s a whiny baby, scared of his shadow. He could never handle what happened to me. He should fight but instead he hides. How can he help anyone? His job is to be saved. Mine is to save him, save everyone.’”

Her forehead and cheeks, her chin down to her neck flushed with guilt. She released his hands and picked at her nailpolish, alternating orange and black for Halloween, matching the stripes in her hair. “I’m awful, I don’t deserve to be here,” she mumbled. “You never said it was my fault the Demogorgon took you to the Upside Down and almost killed you. Put those slugs in you, took over your mind and hurt you. I created the Upside Down. Everything that happened was me.”

“You’re wrong.” He laughed, rueful and sharp. “I thought all of that. Worse. I wished for bad things to happen to you. I hadn’t met you but I was relieved when I heard you were gone forever,trapped in the Upside Down. When you came back I wanted Mike to dump you. I was happy you were stuck in Hopper’s cabin and pissed when he let you out.I wanted life to go back to before, when it was just the four of us, when everything was simple and Mike wasn’t in the basement, sad. Since we moved I figured out it was never that simple. The change would have happened no matter what; I was naive to wish for time to stand still. Everyone was happy to move on and grow up. They were just humoring me on account of all the bad things that had happened to me.”

He’d wandered far from the point, whatever it was. Once again El had encouraged him to talk about secrets he swore he’d never divulge to anyone, especially her. He rough scrubbed his hands through his hair and groaned, exasperated.

“You’re feeling bad that you’re not making progress,” El observed. “But you won’t until you stop chasing and thinking and worrying. Half your energy is wasted wondering if you should ignore your powers or use them. But they’re part of you. Maybe not forever but for now. You need to accept them instead of fighting and fighting.”

He blinked, off-balance and prickly, stuttering weak denials. El grinned, impish and pleased with her powers of deduction, her successful reading of him.

Despite himself he was charmed. She’d wriggled past his defenses. He returned her grin. “Next time we try, I’ll be ready. I’ll be better.”

“So will I,” she promised.

*****

He and El were closer; that didn’t mean he shared everything with her. He continued his solitary rambles, trips that took him further and further from home. He’d learned his lesson, stayed away from spaces where people lived and worked and loitered, if only in secret. Thirty minutes of biking put him across the state border, into empty, unexplored territory. More frequently he hitched rides: hung out by the camping supply store, the gas station where tourists stopped, the diner on the outskirts of town with the fantastic breakfast burritos and smoothies. He skipped school entirely, careful to avoid the multiple days that drew unwelcome attention; asked friends to lie for him if anyone in authority, or El, asked where he was.

The desert landscape on each side of the border was exactly the same: an endlessly spooling road, gently rolling, with tiered, parched brown hills on every side, one behind another behind another stretching to the horizon. Creosote flats replete with sticky sharp yucca and cholla, high-strung jackrabbits and deer. It was the inside of his head that changed. When he crossed from one state to the other, even in others’ vehicles, he felt not simply free, but different. He could go anywhere from here, if he chose. 

Apart from the requirement that it be uninhabitable, lack any buildings however rundown for people to hide in, he never had a particular destination in mind. Wherever his ride left him or he tired of biking, fancied he sensed potential sufficed. There, he performed his rituals. A couple of puffs from a joint. He was experimenting, this time with a blend that Kerry promised him was _Mellow_. It would make him _Fly, but in a lazy way, like a fat bird._ He shed blood, a series of pinpricks in a discreet location with a needle he burned the tip of; a design on paper he reduced to ash with his lighter before he began. The design had no particular significance, changed form with each temporary tattoo, though it always looked vaguely like a door. After the initial pain came heat from low-down in his stomach. Unfolding like a flower in the morning sun, it spread through his chest, limbs and neck, blunting the bite of the November desert air. More than once he thought about Jesse, if he had a tattoo where he couldn’t see it. He pictured Jesse giving him a permanent tattoo, an ink dipped needle moving along his shoulderblade or calf or forearm, pushing gentle then harder into his skin. He thought about the dumb jokes Jesse would tell to distract him, how his hands would feel: warm and rough and firm. He swayed, light-headed. An urgent sound escaped him, half surprise half pain, like he’d lost too much blood but of course not, it was only a few drops. He slapped his cheek once but it didn’t hurt, it didn’t help so he did it again.

_Focus._

A cold, quiet day. He waited an hour to get a ride to a narrow canyon with soft, striated walls, crooked paths cutting through them. He ducked, squeezed and clambered his way to the top. At the end of the path, beyond a rusty chain it was easy to hop over was a two hundred yard walk along a ledge; open to the wind at both sides. Should he slip nothing but sheer rock falling all the way to the bottom. Wizened trees clinging to the sides of the cliff served as possible lifelines; if he were quick. At the end he could sit and inch along until his feet hung over the edge. He could look forward, at the valley laid out before him; look left and right and observe it wasn’t a single canyon but a series of them; look down until he was dizzy. He didn’t end up walking that far. He was braver now but he still wasn’t Lucas. Instead, he settled for a flat-topped boulder halfway down the path. Climbed - looking up, only up - to the top and then over the side, where he found a deep depression in the rock that could have been made for him. Just large enough to sit in cross-legged, sheltered from the wind.

That day the sky was an ocean, endless and grey, the clouds tanker ships moving slowly across the water. The wind wound through the canyons; slipped over low mountains, across the shallow bowl of the valley until it hit more mountains. Then who knew where it went, he couldn’t see further. Everywhere he turned he saw empty desert. No roads or cars in sight. He took his supplies from his jacket pockets. Not too much, he had to make it off this rock in one piece.

Sitting there, he felt the familiar push against his mind that he could only describe in pseudo-poetic terms: a hundred hummingbird wings fluttering emerald green against his face; a russet lake of waist high grass foaming around his legs. In theory picturesque. In practice relentless, annoying and itchy. He’d made his accommodations, become more accustomed to the murmurs in his head that he didn’t understand and now habitually, unthinkingly shooed away, like the crows and squirrels in the yard who ventured too close. That afternoon the sounds were strong, stronger than they’d been in some time but they didn’t bother him. He didn’t bat them away or shut his mind to the melange of nonsense sounds, the hissing, whirring, buzzing, chirping, grinding, rustling. Instead he laughed, loud enough to hear it echo down the canyon. It must have been the weed. He opened the door a fraction: out of curiosity, lack of caution, a reckless desire to see what would happen. He was so fucking tired of running in circles, snapping at his tail. There was something beyond the Upside Down that he could sense but couldn’t gain access to, was being refused access to. Except for this. If these senseless noises were all that were available to him he would grab them, with both hands. 

All that searching and it had been there the whole time.

Everything that surrounded him was now inside him but somehow it all fit; alternately, he had become part of everything outside him while still aware of himself sitting in his rocky niche. His knees and elbows were the stones half buried in the ground; his limbs were twisted branches and his hair spiky pine. He felt the molten heat underneath the skin of the earth. It warmed his chilly bones. His mind reached for it, sank into the ground, dark and surprisingly thin. Languages of birds, snakes, squirrels and deer tickled his ears. Languages he might understand given time. From far above he had a wide-angle view of the earth: multiple shades of brown and a single shade of piney green; grey-green light on pumice and tuff, shale and sandstone: layers of volcanic ash deposited over a time-span he’d never comprehend. He rode the wind across the valley and over those mountains to the other side. If he wanted, he could sink into the khaki colored walls he’d carelessly walked past, scratched with his nails, kicked with his sneakers. Walk straight into them and dissolve, disappear. He heard dry movements in the prickly grass a thousand feet below, the snap of a hawk’s beak, the death squeak of a mouse.

When he came to, one hundred percent returned to his hopelessly fragile, stupidly slow body - fifteen years old but already numbed by too much experience, his body pale and sluggish, oblivious to everything that surrounded him - it took long seconds before the hallucinogenic fog blanketing his eyes faded. The sun, a smear of white barely visible behind the cloud cover, was low in the sky.

It was threatening rain. It was late.

“Drop me off here,” he told his ride. A group of twenty-somethings picked him up after a headlong run down the canyon: tripping repeatedly over loose rocks and tight ones wedged at the perfect angle for trapping a shoe; falling over knotty roots he could barely see in the rapidly approaching twilight; shouting _Shit Shit Shit_ the entire way. Almost sober, suddenly aware of the mess he’d gotten himself into and petrified he’d be left here all night. He didn’t pass anyone on the way down and the desert dropped to freezing this time of year. The rain had arrived, any minute could turn to snow. At the beginning of the trail, the rectangle of dirt that doubled as a parking lot was empty. No payphone. He ran into the road. Half a dozen cars passed him, honking and swerving, fists waving before a jeep plastered in rock climbing and Grateful Dead and college stickers pulled over. It was dark. The girl in the passenger seat rolled down her window and listened skeptically, then more sympathetically to his garbled story about a school project gone awry. She and her friends took pity on him - his tear streaked face and torn, inadequate clothes, his brandished school and state IDs with his current home address, to prove that he was a real person, not a kid grifter with an incestuous cannibal family living in a hovel at the end of a deserted road. They drove miles out of their way to get him home.

“It’s on that road to the left. See the light? That’s my house. You can pull over and leave me here, I’ll walk the rest of the way. No, it’s not too cold. The rain stopped. Yes, I can see. It's not too dark.” They were relieved to be rid of him.

El was waiting for him at the end of the drive, wrapped in her sleeping bag, hair whipping this way and that in the stiff breeze. As he trudged towards her, wanting nothing more than to be clean and in bed, dreading the impending, extended discussion of his _recent choices_ , she pointed a flashlight directly at his face. He shaded his eyes and continued trudging. 

“I’m fucked,” he said, as soon as he was close enough to be heard. The flashlight briefly illuminated Mom’s fleecy, mud-covered slippers, El's brown hair glistening with raindrops, face bright with cold. 

She didn’t disagree.“Joyce called everyone: your teachers; Lorna and Kerry and Luisa and Octavio. Even Jesse. No one knew where you were, but Joyce knows you’ve been lying to her for weeks. Your teachers told her you’ve been missing classes, calling in sick. She squeezed your friends and they’re weak, they gave you up straight away. She’s driving all over the desert looking for you. She called Jonathan but he was on-site; as soon as he got home I told him and he went running out to look for you too. I tried to tell them that sometimes people need space; they need to be alone, really alone. That you were fine and would be home soon. After all, you’ve been coming home every night from wherever it is you go. But they wouldn’t listen.”

He groaned, face in his hands, reeling and exhausted, head pounding. His tongue, dry and fuzzy as a box of cotton wadding lay thick at the bottom of his mouth. His ankle was throbbing. He'd rolled it, possibly sprained it during his downward sprint.

“You made her cry,” El added with a frown, a disapproving note in her voice.“She’s really, really worried. Terrified. And I think Jonathan is angry. With you? With Joyce?”

He sighed. “Probably both of us.” He felt unbearably sad. He felt _old._ He’d let Mom down, let Jonathan down. And yet, he already knew that given a chance he’d do it again. No doubt about it.

Later that night, after the tears and the shouting and the apologies, he told El what he saw, what he experienced on the mountain. He didn’t get the reaction he expected.

“Are you sure you know what was in that joint you smoked? Flying with the birds? Stalking rabbits with a cougar? Slithering along the grass like a snake?”

“How do you. I didn’t. What? I didn’t say anything about drugs!” he spluttered, the world’s least cool bad boy.

“You reeked, Will. I’m sure your Mom could smell you, but she was so relieved you were safe she didn’t say anything.”

*

For the first time in his life Mom grounded him, though she didn’t use the word. He was too old for that particular punishment, and she wasn’t around. What could she do if he chose to leave? Very little.

“I think,” she said, attempting eye contact as he shamefacedly looked at the crack in the living room window, the sun-faded, braided rug, the thick layer of dust on top of the television: anywhere but at her hollow cheeks, the grey lilac shadows ringing her eyes all the way to her cheekbones, “you should stay close to home. I’d feel a lot better knowing you were safe and staying out of trouble. To be able to come home at the end of the day and see your smiling face.” He fought her first with silence, thenindignation, and finally wheedling but needn’t have bothered.

“Ok,” he mumbled, defeated. “If you think it’s a good idea. For how long?”

“Oh, putting a time frame around it is counter-productive. Don’t you agree?”

Despite his punishment, he had plenty of opportunities to keep doing what he’d been doing: not come home after school, sneak out after checking in, return before the adults did. If Mom and Jonathan had ridden his ass, said they were monitoring him he would have done just that. Instead, they did nothing but play on his sense of responsibility.

Jonathan squeezed his shoulder in sympathy, a touch harder than necessary. “At least while you were out doing your thing your little brother wasn’t kidnapped by a monster, or possessed by a demon god and falling into a coma. Those were hard ones to come back from.” Jonathan looked at him in a new way: encouraging, _This too shall pass_ , with a touch of _What did I tell you, life’s a bitch_. Though as far as he remembered Jonathan had never said anything like that to him. His words were delivered with a quick, sardonic twist of his mouth, a flash of bitterness that was startling to hear. For years Jonathan had switched with ease between acting like his dad and acting like his brother. Either way, for as long as he could remember he’d always been his advocate. Here though, he held his peace. He didn’t argue with Mom on his behalf, nor did he agree with her. He left for work early in the morning and went straight to the Airstream at the end of his workday, knocking hello on his window as he passed. Jonathan had issued a standing invitation, he could stop by the trailer whenever he wanted: no need to ask. More than his embarrassment and guilt, his secrets kept him away.

Worse was Mom’s anxious, forlorn _disappointment,_ something he had never been subjected to. In his room he had plenty of time to play what-if, to scourge himself for adding to her stress. He forced himself to listen to her one-sided conversations. _If anything happened to him I couldn’t bear it, not even for El. Don’t say that, Joyce. You’re not a quitter, you never quit. You’re a fighter that’s what you are, that’s what he called you. Nothing happened to him this time. He’s safe. He’s safe and soon he’ll tell you what’s going on in that head of his. He’s getting closer. You can feel it, can’t you?_

In the beginning he wore a hair shirt. He diligently studied and avoided his friends, who Mom wrongly blamed for _Steering him in the wrong direction._ He sulkily rejected El’s sisterly overtures. She was the only member of his family who continued to treat him as before; that was reason enough to resent her. _I know you can hear me_ , El thought at him from the other side of his bedroom door. _I’m mad at you. You’re not acting like a friend or a brother or even a nice stranger. You’re acting like a big jerk. A big_ fucking _jerk. I’m going to tell on you if you don’t open up. I won’t help you next time you ask, because you will ask._ He refused to take the bait, kicked himself that El deeper in his head was his sole reward for hour after hour of practice. El kicked his door before stomping back to her room. _Why are you so stubborn?_ she hollered, loud enough to make his eyes water.

The dogs would have helped him feel better, but he didn’t let them.

Contrition turned to cabin fever. He was bored of studying, sick of acting righteous. His typical remedies - pills and knives and glassed-off rooms, picturing himself lying at the bottom of a canoe, watching the clouds roll past - weren’t working like they used to. In the battle between him and the voices in his head, the voices were winning. Since that afternoon in the desert, the otherwordly, animal noises - in retrospect respectful, serene - were mute. He heard only a barrage of humans, living and dead: more and louder than they’d ever been. Thought by anguished, agitated thought they nibbled away at his sanity.

He pounded his head against his bedroom door, lightly then harder. Sat cross-legged with his back against the wall and breathed, slowly and deliberately. _Ten nine eight seven six five four three two one._ Again and again and again, like El had taught him, until he could isolate one voice from the other. Finally, he heard a familiar, welcome intonation, the one least likely to send him reeling into the night.

Nancy. _Good old, reliable Nancy_ , he thought, relieved. Home for Thanksgiving break. He could use a dose of her do-good, try-hard, get knocked down and come back swinging attitude.

_The money, the money. Hundreds of thousands given but I don’t see any results. Any action._

Today he wasn’t just unhappy, he was frustrated. No, he was furious. Irritation had shifted to resentment, morphed into anger, built to a stomach churning rage that took on a life of its own. Any minute it would burst through his skin and slime along his bedroom floor, the acid dissolving the clothes and textbooks strewn across his floor, pulping his bloody corpse. For months Mom hadn’t been paying attention to him. When she finally did, she didn’t see what was right in front of her. She thought he was dabbling in teenage rebellion, acting out because he missed Hawkins and the ones who knew him. She should know him better; he wouldn’t do that. Maybe if she asked real questions, didn’t punish him for doing what she ordered him to do (“Go out! Have fun! Make friends!”) he’d share what was happening in that head of his. Jonathan and her, how could they not see what was going on? They used to notice, even when he pretended everything was normal. They used to ask, used to care. It must be El. He was a middle child now. While he and El were the same age she acted like a baby, forcing Mom to focus on her. 

_There was that announcement from the Chamber of Commerce. Small business grants to revive the local economy. Was it ever disbursed?_

El El El El El El. That’s all Mom cared about. What did it matter if El helped him, she was useless. Without her powers she was nothing. But he deserved her because he was useless, he was nothing. Whatever the fuck was happening to him was useless. El was right, he was imagining it. Imagining it so vividly he’d memorized enough monologues for a one-man play, could stalk a hare and fly as fast, as far as an eagle; listen to trees talking, watch rocks forming and that meant there was something wrong with him. Hospital wrong. Doctor wrong. Crazy wrong.

_What happened to the new and improved mall and the jobs it would provide? Hardhats and speeches, then nothing. Just holes in the ground, painted boards and construction equipment that sits, unused. What happened to the new and improved Hawkins Lab that would conduct above board, unimpeachable scientific work - and more importantly, provide jobs. An abandoned building, grass a foot higher than when I last checked._

El was another mouth to feed but Mom was soft on her because she connected her to Hopper. He was an idiot for being nice to her but he wouldn’t make that mistake again. She was using him that was the only reason she’d gotten her average into the mid-seventies. Wouldn’t she be surprised when he stopped tutoring her and she failed. Let her go crying to Mike; let’s see how much he’d like her, love her when he had to tutor her and understood how dumb she really was. 

_The folks who lost their jobs, their businesses, their homes, they’re never going to get those back. But no one in charge seems to care, feel any sense of urgency._

Thinking about Mike and El made him think about Jesse, the dream he’d had about him the night before and what, why, how. No. He had to stop thinking about Jesse. It was creepy and weird to have dreams about his older brother’s friend, someone who thought of him as a kid, like one of his little brothers. Why can’t his brain give him a fucking break for one day, one hour, one god damn minute. 

_Have even more people left? Mike was right, this place is looking like a ghost town. Dad is such a fucking idiot for refusing to leave. Even the Harringtons moved, Hawkins royalty that they are, if only as far as Bloomington._

Why can’t he be normal, being a Byers is such bullshit bullshit bullshit. He screamed it over and over, he stood up and kicked everything anything within reach and

He was in the back seat of Nancy’s station wagon. 

_If I hadn’t come back would anyone be following up on this story? I don’t live here anymore yet I seem to care more about this town than anyone in Hawkins._

She braked at a four-way stop. Two cars sat in front of her, giving her ample time to examine herself in the rearview mirror, adjust it and in the process look straight at him. 

He threw up his hands. “I’m sorry Nancy I can explain don’t freak out,” he yelped. But no sound left his mouth. She readjusted her mirror and muttered something he didn’t catch, moved briskly through the intersection. 

“Nancy! Can you hear me? Can you see me?” 

_Remember, firm but diplomatic. Don’t accuse, but also hold your ground. He’s going to explain to you why you’re stupid for thinking there’s no story. No longer a zombie - probably - but still in bed with the mayor.Don’t take the bait._

“Nancy! C’mon I’m right behind you. Look at me!”

She switched lanes. 

_I need to be like Murray: more paranoid. A hypothesis. Maybe they want this reconstruction plan to fail. They want the town to empty out. But who’s they? And why would they want that?_

She turned left into the newspaper parking lot.

_Could it be that an empty town is_

A Lincoln Towncar backed too fast out of its spot; an old man driver who absolutely shouldn’t have a license, his wrinkly bald head barely cleared the top of the steering wheel as his orthopedic shoe-clad foot pressed too hard on the gas. Nancy hit the brakes with a screech and a “Fuck!” and a lurch that snapped her head against her seat. 

Throwing him back into his body. He lay on his floor gasping, sucking in oxygen like a fish pulled from a lake and leisurely examined, poked and prodded before being tossed back in. With less understanding of what had happened to him than if he were an undersized rainbow trout. 

“Holy, holy fucking shit.” 

Wait until El heard about this development.

He wanted to play it cool, but was bubbling to overflowing with excitement, bursting at the seams with satisfaction. It had been ages since he had felt like this, felt good about himself. He’d never done anything so amazing, so unexpected of him.

El saw him and knew straight away. _Tell me_. But Mom was there and, Murphy’s Law, Jonathan and Jesse and Jesse’s twin brothers, twelve years old and hyper, a continuous stream of fart jokes, the plot of Big Trouble in Little China, every last detail from that afternoon’s JV football game. Annoying as hell.

“Will, what have you been doing all afternoon?” Mom asked, real exasperation in her voice. “You said you’d put the potatoes in the oven.” She wielded two Idaho russets like clubs. “How are we going to feed all these people?” He stared, non-plussed. She might as well have asked him how he was planning to fly all of them to Mars. 

“We’ve got spaghetti, Mom,” Jonathan said soothingly. “You like noodles?” he asked Jesse’s brothers. They said yes because who doesn’t, and for a dollar and five cents they had something to eat their Hamburger Helper with. Dinner was followed by clean-up. All in all, ninety excruciating minutes during which El squinted at him significantly, kicked him under the table, whisper-thought at him as they washed dishes. “I can’t hear you. Not now. I can’t hear you. _Later_ ,” he hissed.

“Tell me!” she ordered, as soon as they were in her room, the door locked and Mom in the living room, gazing sightlessly at the television, nursing a goblet of red wine. He did, sparing her the pre-flight details. She nodded, pleased.

“When are you going to try again? I want to be there. I want to see it.”

“Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” she said. “Well, I sixty-five, probably seventy-five percent believe you. To increase the percentage, I have to see for myself.” That was fair, he’d have said the same thing.

“Tomorrow. Let’s try tomorrow.”

It took days before he succeeded. “Now I ninety-three percent believe you,” El said. “I can’t one hundred percent believe anything. It’s important to leave room for alternate explanations.” That afternoon, from a chair in Mom's office he heard a car backfire, saw Mom startle and spill the coffee she was drinking down her shirt. Evidence that could be confirmed that evening by a third party. By El.

*

One way that he and El were alike was that _Why_ didn’t concern her. Only _What_ and _How_ and the desire to solve this latest development, where solve was defined as: How can we expand your ability without killing you?

“It’s different. Before,” he squeezed his eyes shut, contemplated the most precise way to explain the unexplainable, “I was in their heads; or they were in mine. I could hear what they were thinking, _see_ what they were thinking. But I never saw them - where they were, who they were with or what they were doing. You could have been picking your nose and eating your buggers in the middle of Geometry, and as long as you weren’t thinking about it, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

She wrinkled her nose. _Ew._ “So it’s like what I used to do but next level?” Hushed and reverent, nostalgic.

“No,” he shook his head emphatically. “I don’t have that kind of control. I don’t have a choice. For the longest time I thought there was a door - a portal, a gate, an opening, an in-between dimension, whatever you want to call it, like the space you moved in at the Lab - that was connecting me to them. But I was wrong. I’m pretty sure _I’m_ the door. It’s like they’re walking through me into my head, not bothering to knock. Apparently, they can now pull me towards them, into their reality, the physical space they’re occupying. Through myself, that’s how I’ve started to think about. It’s what happened with Nancy.” El nodded. “And when I was at the top of the canyon. It was the same,” he insisted. “It’s true!” 

“Ok, ok,” she said, bumping his shoulder with hers, more to mollify him than because she agreed. 

Here’s what they eventually figured out.

Number 1: The most important. It was imperative that he maintain a connection to his physical body. He couldn’t lose track of it. His body contained a heartbeat, lungs that oxygenated his blood. If he became distracted by what he was experiencing and forgot about it, he’d last as long as he could go without air. When he forgot, he needed someone to crack him across the face to bring him back. When he forgot; not if. His complaints to El about lack of control weren’t only self-pity and lack of confidence. He wasn’t yet in charge of this ability, and without a trigger to break the connection between him and whoever called him, he could disappear for longer than his body could handle.

El was more than happy to oblige. “Just don’t leave a mark,” he begged. “How the hell are we going to explain that?” 

Number 2: No one can could see him, hear him, touch him. But he could leave an object behind. Nothing significant: a scrap of paper, a pencil, a stick of gum. A nail but not a hammer.

Number 3: It was easy to get lost. If he listened to the person too closely, stopped concentrating on his surroundings, neglected to build the proverbial glass wall, their thoughts sent him elsewhere. Most of the time, he learned, people weren’t focused on where they were. (The exception: babies who’d recently learned to walk. They were always, absolutely in the moment.) When the person’s thoughts shifted, he did too. Sometimes he went elsewhere from the very beginning, as if they were sending him there. To witness. To ease their burden. Better him than them. He ended up in places uncomfortable in their associations: Jonathan’s bed, a child’s cell in the remnants of the Lab, Hawkins High circa 1963. He ended up in places that were harder to escape. A mass grave of Flayed, unrecognised and unclaimed. He shouted, came back to himself with funeral dirt in his mouth; ran retching to the bathroom, too slow, and threw up his afternoon snack all over the linoleum. El followed him, watching him with eyes like black holes. He saw the Upside Down version of his house, the pea green light, the chemical dustbunnies swirling like confetti in a soundless breeze. Visited a sensory deprivation tank; a concrete room where a naked man, arms protecting his face, was firehosed with freezing water; a dozen houses he didn’t recognize, each with an asshole dad he'd never met. (Far too many people, he discovered, had an asshole dad.) He found himself deep in a cave system that was like being locked in a dark, windowless room times infinity. A place where light had never existed. He had no idea which way was up, bumped and lost his footing on uneven, slick-slimy rock that hemmed him in from all sides. The only sound the plop, plop, plop of water that had been dripping for a million yearsHe knew El was with him but it didn’t matter. He’d never get out, never find his way home, he was stupid, he was sorry, he’d be more careful next time, he’d never do it again. He screamed and screamed but no sound came out of his mouth.

“That took a long time,” El said sternly, when he’d stopped wheezing and brought her into focus. She clambered off him and released his wrists. “You were shaking and shouting, hitting yourself. Your face turned purple and red, I thought you’d swallow your tongue.” He looked away from her, as if to ward off what she said next. “I don’t think we should do this anymore. You’re going under for longer and longer. Joyce would never forgive me if she knew I was helping you. What would she say, what would she do if you got seriously hurt and I was with you?”

“So that’s it?” His voice wobbled, he’d forgotten the vows he’d made minutes before.

She was sympathetic but obdurate: teacherly. “I’m trying to be more responsible, think about the _consequences_ of my actions and how they impact others.” She crinkled her nose in an unconscious imitation of Mom. “I’m sorry. I understand, it’s fun.”

“It’s scary. It’s dangerous.” Every day he read the local paper with a mouse quick heart, but no one had reported strange boys sneaking into their house and spying on them, potential Satanic activity or death metal cults. He’d grown fond of black. 

“Sure,” she said dismissively. “But it also feels good to be powerful, to do what no one else can.But not if it kills you,” she concluded, her tone indicating that as far as she was concerned, the discussion was over. And that, he thought, was that. Back to the mundane, to expending his energy on fruitless attempts to close the door to himself; whistling tunelessly, looking in the other direction while he stutter stepped into becoming something else. Back to pretending it mattered that he was a struggling B student who’d be an effortless A student if he only applied himself, quit dreaming from the back row.

Except one day in early April, shortly before spring break El found him at his locker and thrust a postcard at him. It was addressed to Jane Hopper, care of Franklin High School. A picture of a college campus, one he was familiar with. A sentence about their great cross country program. She should give them a call to learn more. 

“It’s from my sister. It means she’s there.”

“That’s nice,” he said, eyes tracking down the hall. He didn’t want to get stuck at the end of the lunch line. The tater tots at the bottom of the pan were the soggiest.

“It is nice. For _you_ ,” she said portentously.

“What?”

She moved uncomfortably close considering they were in public. He took an automatic step back, forcing her to whisper, “She has Moved On but still has her Stuff with her. I think she can help you,” her eyebrows theatrically waggled, “with Your Stuff.” With a long elbow she jabbed him in the solar plexus.

“What?” Friday, it was Friday. Was he supposed to meet everyone at Sonic?

She knew he didn’t like it when she thought at him in school, but he was distracted and this was important. _She can help you with your powers, dummy. Teach you to use them better._ _You just need to go to her._

And his heart leapt. It soared. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big love to sewn for being a fantastic beta and talking with me about Will’s powers and how they work. 
> 
> Next up (last up): Road trip!


	6. Chapter 6

A quarter of an hour after pulling out of the driveway, he remembered. Since driving here from Hawkins, practically a year and a half ago, he and Jonathan hadn’t spent very much time together, alone. 

He cast his mind back, there must have been one or two instances; but no, not really. Wherever he looked there was El. There was Jesse: bumping shoulders with Jonathan, slinging an arm around him, sprawled close enough that body parts were always touching. Though Jonathan didn’t seem to notice how lucky he was to have a friend like that. Less frequently, there was Mom. More recently, there was Julia, a girl friend from Jonathan’s work. (The space between the two words was key, though he remained quietly skeptical. He hadn't heard much from Nancy, lately.) There were his own friends, whom he eventually allowed into the house. He wasn’t ashamed for them to see it, but inviting them over was an admission that he hadn’t just grudgingly accepted his circumstances, he’d become accustomed to them. There were Max and Lady, funny how dumb animals filled up so much space, obviated the need for conversation. When it was just Jonathan and him, there was a task between them - learning to drive, fixing up the yard and the driveway, doing a grocery run - the lines of speech already written down. “I’ll tackle the frozen aisle, bread and cereal. You do milk and canned goods.” “You don’t have to remind me. I know Safeway brand is our first choice.” 

He stared out the passenger side window, slurping milky coffee from a thermos Mom pressed into his hand. The other still clutched a brown paper bag of bologna and cheese sandwiches, thick with mayo, light on the mustard that he’d soon polish off as a second breakfast. Limp carrots and a squishy sour red apple he’d fob off on Jonathan. The landscape was mile after mile of high desert, less than a dozen inches of rain a year. “A couple of hours before we get to the city it’ll start to look different, get green,” Jonathan promised. He missed the softness of real trees, real grass and real flowers. Places that weren’t bleached to three practically identical shades, belonged on a desert planet a million light years away.

The truck had a tape player. While he wouldn’t admit to it, Jonathan had assembled new tapes for the drive. They listened to: It’s Too Fucking Early To Be On the Road; then: Let’s Kick It Up A Bit, It’s Warm and Sunny and We’re Going Places. They were halfway through This Is Too Aggressive and Sexual To Play When I’m Trapped Inside The Car With My Older Brother, he heard Jesse’s influence, when Jonathan spoke. 

“It's good, right.” 

“It’s all right. But does every song have to be about girls. How awful they are but at least they’re worth having sex with?”

“What makes you think this song’s about girls? There’s like five separate words being sung. D’you know the lead singer of The Dicks is gay?” 

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Why would he know that? Seconds ago he’d never heard of this band.

“They’re talking about how much they hate conservative, religious, hypocritical assholes; the police; Nazis and other fascist racists. Y’know, the basics. We might be able to see them play, if you want."

He shrugged. He nodded, vaguely.

“I’m going to make you a tape. Maybe I’ll start off with Identity Crisis. You know that one? It’s like the Byers family anthem. ‘There's always someone looking and they're always gonna snicker. And they're always gonna point. And they're gonna give you a Identity Crisis.  ” He looked at him through his hair - long and floppy, bleached by the sun, reaching past his shirt collar. He blew it out of his eyes and blinked, waiting for him to do something more than nod and shrug. 

“Sure? That sounds good. If you want to. I guess…” 

Jonathan’s eyes clouded with disappointment, but he played it off.  “Cool. I’ll get on it, when we’re back home.”

He wasn’t ignoring Jonathan’s hints, his clumsy attempts to start a conversation, should he wish to unburden himself. _I see you. I’m not sure exactly what I’m seeing, but I have my guesses. Which are Jesse’s guesses but he’d know better than me. Right? Am I close?_ He truly didn’t understand the subject Jonathan was trying to broach. Though he was as subtle as Mom when she inquired if he’d seen any monsters lately: under the bed or next to his locker or in the bathroom mirror. He had his flashes of suspicion, of comprehension. Flashes that confused and frightened him, that he squished deep down, or more often forgot about as another supernatural revelation crashed through the front door of his brain. 

“Those lyrics aren’t normal, though. That’s not how most people think. That’s just the fringe stuff you listen to. You can’t point to an album that sells a few hundred copies - a few dozen and not in stores but at shows, that never gets airtime outside of college stations in the middle of the night and claim that most music isn’t about boys and girls and love. Or boys and girls and sex. What about Prince! Bruce Springsteen! Madonna! What about your beloved Smiths? Your once beloved Smiths. Whatever, I get it. You’re too cool, too punk for them now. Doesn’t change the fact that all they do is whine about the girls who will never love them. Because they hate themselves and are too scared to leave their rooms!”

And they were off. The Byers equivalent of who would beat who: Godzilla or Mothra, Mothra or King Kong, King Kong or the world’s biggest T. Rex, T. Rex or the Hulk. (Though they argued about those too.) It was comfortable, like slipping on a perfectly worn pair of sweatpants and a cotton undershirt. No matter how many times Mom washed them they never stopped smelling, stopped feeling like they should. 

He saw what Jonathan was doing, trying to jolly him out of whatever mood he thought he was in. Put him at ease, slow down his joggling knees and rat-a-tatting fingers. 

But the comfortable, the familiar weren't what he wanted. He was strung tight with anticipation. This conversation wouldn’t change that, he wouldn’t let it. His life was about to change, and he was long past ready. 

“Sure, hair metal bands sing about girls,” Jonathan said _hair metal_ like Mom said _Your father_ or _Reagan_ or _Hawkins._ But Black Sabbath? Metallica? Master of Puppets! That’s hardly fringe. It sold half a million copies last year. It reached twenty-nine on the Billboard album charts. And that’s without getting any radio airtime _or_ releasing any videos. He thumped the armrest with his elbow. "If you look inside there's probably…” 

“Don’t you want to know?” he burst out, sounding as frustrated and impatient as he felt.

Jonathan stuttered to a halt, threw a cautious glance his way. “Don’t I want to know what?”

“Why, exactly, you’re driving me across the state. Why I’m asking you lie to Mom. Why I want to meet mysterious, dangerous strangers. You didn’t ask me a single question. All it took you to agree was that I let you come along.”

Jonathan leaned forward and turned off his mix. 

“I did ask questions. I just didn’t ask them to you.” 

For a few minutes, silence. With the music gone - the relentless, two-note drums and off-kilter, ominous guitars; the handful of words said over and over ( _gun, shit, fuck, dreams, nightmares, pussy, anxiety, depression_ ), the screeching and moaning that no matter what Jonathan said absolutely did sound like someone trying to have an orgasm - his body went limp, ignoring his desire to hold his nerviness close. 

They listened to the hiss of the air conditioner, the thunk-a-thunk of wheels over highway seams. The engine grumbled and rumbled with each downshift, every upshift. But it wasn’t long before Jonathan, just as compulsive as him and the driver was always in charge, reached for the radio dial, twirled it until he located a completely inoffensive station: classic rock. A not too loud, acoustic guitar. A nasal, whiny voice. A song pushed through a rubber hose. 

"'Though you’re thinking that you’re leaving there too soon, you’re leaving there too soon,'” Jonathan warbled. 

“Then who _did_ you ask questions to?”

"'It’s so noisy at the fair, but all your friends are there.' El. 'There's a girl just down the aisle. Oh to turn and see her smile.'"

“You’re flat.” Though was he? How could anyone tell? Why did he say that? It wasn't liked he cared.

Jonathan nodded earnestly, like he’d told him something revelatory. “I should work on that. How’s this? ‘Oh, to live on, sugar mountain. With the barkers and the colored balloons.’ ” 

“Too sharp. And stop trying to change the subject. What, exactly, did El say?”

“That she doesn't know much about the others, how Kali found them; desperately wishes she could come with us but feels weird, like she isn't one of them anymore. Most importantly, that her sister is really pretty.” 

“About me,” he yelped. “What did El say about _me_? There, are you satisfied? I said it. I want to talk about me. Me, me, me. Me and my powers. Ok?”

Jonathan grinned from ear-to-ear, eyes turned to slits, face crinkling like a self-satisfied cat. As quickly as it emerged his smile vanished. He frowned, bushy brows and dark circles pushing his eyes deeper into their sockets. 

“She said you were seeing things. Real things, is how she put it.” He spoke deliberately, slowly crossing a log bridge slippery with moss and damp, arms spread out for balance. “Your…abilities weren’t coming from someone else, from somewhere else. ‘It belongs to you,’ is what she said. Over and over, to make sure I got it. Like how she could do stuff, but different. She also said that you’re 'Strong and getting stronger.' No, that’s not right.” He shook his head. “She said you’re, ‘Advanced and still growing, growing fast. Like in school but better because Will hasn’t been good at school for a while.’” Jonathan couldn’t stop himself from throwing a disapproving glance. “But she doesn’t know how to help you, anymore. She’s worried that without help you’ll hurt yourself. Overuse your abilities and burn out.”

_Powers_. Jonathan didn’t use the word. 

“Like she did.”

“Right. That’s what she said.” Like talismans, Jonathan kept repeating: _El told me._ _That’s what she said. El thinks._ If El corroborated his ravings, they weren’t necessarily true. But they were more likely to be. 

In that moment, in the days and weeks that followed, he felt pangs of sympathy for Mom. Jonathan was so _literal_. No wonder the two of them argued so much. 

“That’s it?”

“That’s what I could understand, yeah. You know how El is. She gets a little mystical and monosyllabic when she’s talking about the supernatural. Makes it hard to follow her train of thought.”

“But her mumbo-jumbo,” he lifted his arms in the air, wiggled his hips like he was a Weird Sister spider-dancing around a cauldron, “still convinced you?”

“I’ve done worse with less.”

True. But Jonathan’s lack of curiosity irked him. Talking about his supernatural _abilities_ so matter-of-factly, so dispassionately, like he had evinced an adolescent talent that would look fantastic on college applications; like this trip was simply another play from the Byers Best Big Brother Golden Rule Book. 

_Stick with Jonathan._

_Listen to Jonathan._

_Do what Jonathan tells you to do._

_Jonathan will take care of you_. 

_(Everyone knows you can’t take care of yourself.)_

He waited until Jonathan took a big swig from his thermos. 

“Did El tell you I’ve been spending a lot of time with Nancy? That’s some crusade she’s on, hm?”

He immediately regretted saying it. But the spit take Jonathan did - coffee all over the steering wheel - was glorious to witness. Almost made it worth it. 

*

They stopped at a motel on the fringes of the city: a ‘70s classic. Jonathan was always on the lookout for places to eat, places to sleep that weren't chains. “They have character. One day you’ll understand. You’ll miss them,” he’d said on their cross-country drive. Jonathan shot rolls of film of the battered signs behind diner counters, the shiny chrome of their chairs, classic and not-so-classic cars with interesting paint jobs, skaters on courthouse steps, breakdancers in parking lots, men in cowboy hats and women with big hair and bigger jewelry, the mint green tile in the bathroom with the matching acrylic tub. He thought longingly of the Wendy’s, the Taco Bell, and the Sizzler that, along with a Best Western, Motel 6 and Holiday Inn, made up an easy-to-access complex off the interstate. Complete with cable TV and swimming pools stinking of chlorine. 

Their room had orange velour bedspreads, floral wallpaper and green carpet the color of avocado flesh. White frosted, tulip shaped lights, only one of which worked, had been screwed into the walls. It smelled like a slutty pine forest.

“It’s cheaper than over by campus, where all the parents stay,” Jonathan replied to his unspoken complaint. “Where your friends are.”

“They’re not my friends,” he said reflexively. But he couldn’t help but hope they might be. 

Since he brought up Nancy he'd talked. And talked. Jonathan intermittently asked questions, tried to focus him. Mostly, he let him ramble: nodding along, crinkling his brows and trying, unsuccessfully, to appear unperturbed. A few times he smiled. Once, he even laughed. He’d speak in a great gush of words, then fall silent. He was done. Minutes later more would come pouring out. Months and months of feelings though he tried hard to avoid talking about his feelings; he wanted to stick to the events, to the facts as he understood them. 

Nine and a half hours in the car and they still hadn’t crossed the entire state. It was dark by the time the promised green appeared. He stripped off his clothes and tumbled into bed. He dimly heard Jonathan reminding him he’d brought sleepwear, cajoling him to brush his teeth and drink some water before he fell asleep; but he was tired, so very tired. He was going to sleep deeply, all night and wake up refreshed, prepared for whatever awaited him in the morning.

He woke up dry-mouthed, sweat-stuck to his sheets. His chest wasn’t damp, it was dripping. The AC unit below the windows whirred and creaked. Only for show. His pillow was sticky. The sheets were simultaneously slippery, itchy and wet. They smelled like El’s sheets from Hopper's cabin: smoke and ant-riddled wood; green, standing water. Didn't matter how much bleach Mom used.

Jonathan was snoring. He checked the clock: 12:07.

He checked the clock: 1:13. It was like Jonathan had bogarted all the good sleep mojo.

In the bathroom he took a piss and drank a glass of water. Contemplated brushing his teeth, decided they’d survive a few more hours of neglect; elected to instead examine himself in the mirror, under fluorescent lights that brought out the yellow-green of his skin. He tugged his hair - long enough to be wavy, it straggled between his eyebrows, curled past his ears and tickled the tops of his jaw.Better, getting better but nothing yet to rival Jonathan’s mop. The girl at the drive-thru had stared at it, practically reached out to touch it and he didn’t notice. When he pointed her out, he rolled his eyes and made a gentle, self-deprecating remark. Not for show, either. 

It was aggravating. To have good attention and not want it. 

Everything felt too close. Despite the closed bathroom door he could hear all of it: the asthmatic churning of the AC; Jonathan’s breathing and snuffling; the silent hum of the plugged-in television; the ticking of the sole, functioning lightbulb; a car pulling into the parking lot. The inside of his head was vast and echoing. He had a dry hangover, from his talk talk talking in the car.

_Idiot_ , he thought. _Why did you have to go and do that? Be honest and forthcoming. Now Mom will find out, though Jonathan swore he wouldn’t tell her. She’ll have so many opinions, will want to take control but this mine. (Mine mine mine.) She can’t tell me what to do, how to handle it._ _She doesn’t know what to do, how to handle it, and I’m not going to let her pretend that she does._

He fetched his toilet bag and found his emergency stash, hidden at the bottom of a bottle of chewable antacids. They were covered in dust, tasted like chalk, stained his tongue pink. Since El had stopped helping him, told him she was worried he’d hurt himself he’d focused on shutting out familiar voices, fending off attempts to draw him Elsewhere. "No more solo adventures," he promised her, amidst pinky swears and pricked fingers, the only blood he'd been shedding, recently. He kept busy with school, with normal high school sophomore activities. But there were still bad days; bad nights, too. Occasionally, despite his efforts he'd slipped the chains of his body. But he’d become adept at noticing the signs, using his drugs like a prophylactic: easing the transitions and the time spent Elsewhere, mitigating the after-effects. 

Safety first.

Outside, he smoked one of Mom’s cigarettes. Stolen on a whim and promptly forgotten about until his fingers brushed it, mashed into his jacket pocket along with a book of matches and an egg shaped river stone Jesse had left at Jonathan’s place. He finished most of it, didn't gag or choke, but here was one bad habit he wouldn’t pick up.

The nicotine buzz wore off and the pills kicked in. He was as he should be: regular internal pressure, heart slow but steady, limbs and skin relaxed and loose, taking up no more, no less space than they should. The urge to scratch his head until he reached bone, reached brain was gone. 

That’s when he heard them, buzzing in his ears. 

It had been months since he’d last heard them.

He’d missed them. 

He understood them. They were telling him to come to them. They showed him a picture, he knew where to go.

Not for one, solitary second did it cross his mind to ignore them. He didn't debate whether to wake up Jonathan and inform him what was happening, ask him for a ride or advice. Didn't think about blowing them off. “Sorry, maybe next time. I’ve got an important meeting in the morning.” He didn’t hesitate, consider the wiser alternative: returning to his bed. Like a sleepwalker, he slipped inside and snicked Jonathan’s keys from the hall table. His license, freshly minted, was already in the pocket of his canvas jacket, along with the motel key, some change and a ten dollar bill. He wore his travel clothes: jeans and a t-shirt, sneakers no socks.

He hoisted himself into the driver’s seat and took a deep breath. Said a prayer and turned the key in the ignition, cautiously navigated his way to the parking lot entrance/exit. He looked in his rear-view mirror: the door to his room remained shut. 

_Right_ , they said. He turned right. 


	7. Chapter 7

He was directed to a street - right, left, right, left, left, right, right; he’d never find his way back to the motel - that dead ended onto an auto junkyard. 

The street was deserted: lined on both sides with metal shuttered warehouses and storage units, a handful of parked cars. One missing its wheels, another its windows. The emptiness was ideal for multiple reasons, including that he hadn’t yet learned to parallel park. He slowed to a crawl and lurched up the curb. Killed the engine and peeled his hands from the steering wheel, waited for them to stop cramping, for his heart to stop thundering in his ears.

He made it across the street but, cursing, had to trot back to the truck and retrieve the flashlight from the glove compartment.

A nominal attempt had been made to protect the junk. The entrance was padlocked shut. The fence that ringed the property rose above his head, but it wasn’t topped with anything scary, like razor wire or glass, and he couldn’t think of any reason to electrify it. To be sure, he retrieved a couple of empties from the gutter and threw them against it.

Near the entrance was a well-lit security booth. The buzzing had grown louder, more urgent, suggestions one on top of the other. He ignored them; watched for a tell-tale sweep of flashlight, the crunch of soles on gravel.

Nothing. He took a breath and started climbing.

It was a much bigger junkyard than Hawkins’. The cars and trucks were tightly packed, extending in all directions, narrow paths zig-zagging between them. The only lights he had to work with came from city buildings, the center miles away, reflected down to him by the clouds. The streetlights by the entrance, the bare bulb in the security booth didn’t penetrate beyond the first rows of vehicles. Turned out, his flashlight was dead.

With limited light and randomized paths - some so narrow he had to turn sideways to make his way between burnt shells - he carefully wandered. Eventually he reached a crossroads, a four way stop and hesitated: left or right or straight ahead? On queue, half a dozen rats skittered by, from one heap of industrial slag to another. He resisted the urge to shriek, to clamber to higher ground. 

Straight ahead it was.

That’s when he saw it, missing wheels and lacking windows, but the latter only because it had never possessed them in the first place. Too dark to tell but surely pockmarked with rust and dents both big and small; long strips of paint scraped off, revealing the gunmetal grey underneath. One of those hulking, black vans from the movies. Inside, plenty of space for computer equipment to spy on people in their most intimate moments; plenty of room for guns big and small, hundreds of rounds of ammo, dead bodies and the equipment to dispose of them. And cut into the middle of the van, a circular door. Not glowing or crackling or talking, giving off any supernatural vibes. Just a round door, cut through with what must have been an awfully strong blade. He couldn’t see inside, but it felt like an empty black. Not one full of the unseen: seats, electrical equipment, a bed. A pack of dogs and a heap of bones.

No, it wasn’t much. But this was the beginning of true understanding. It didn’t matter one whit what magic looked like. It was pointless to search for poetry or methodology, reason or symmetry. Access to Elsewhere would happen where and when it would. His job was to be ready: to know it when he saw it and suspend disbelief, seize the opportunity and engage with an open mind. 

He closed his eyes and curled into a standing ball - it was a wide circle but also a jagged one;gingerly hoisted himself up and through. The smells were those one would expect. Dust, rotting fabric and old metal; generic decay. With his first step he heard the crunch of broken glass, felt plastic underfoot. With his second step came a crunch more akin to stepping on tree branches, accompanied by something firm but soft underneath. Like pressing onto a giant toadstool though he knew it wasn’t anything as pleasant as that. A third step - he took small ones, probing with his sneakered toes for holes in the floor - and more glass; a tangle round his ankle that this time made him shriek. It was only a wire. With the fourth step his foot pressed intoslightly unstable solid ground. A fifth and he felt a breeze, a shiver of salt air. With his final, closed-eye step the atmosphere on his eyelids changed: from dry and cool to wet and bright. 

He was at the end of a crescent shaped beach. Brown, glittering sand. Still, blue-green water. Thick, grey clouds through which strong light nevertheless filtered, enough to make him squint. On the horizon, a hint of white; across the water, more beach. A lighthouse, too. 

It was a very quiet beach. No people, not even a sandpiper or a crab shell. A piece of trash. He turned a couple of slow circles. No van. His head was silent.

There was a trail, though, snaking up a dune. He hiked it, brown sand gradually becoming pink sand, sparse grass becoming thicker, a gentle rise turning into a steep one, finally flattening into a scrubby pine forest. 

All this took longer than the couple of minutes he could handle, being Elsewhere. He thought about it as he walked and huffed and puffed, quads protesting, as he stripped off his jacket and tied it around his waist, rolled up the bottoms of his jeans and curled his bare toes around the sand in his shoes. Thought about it in a distant, accepting way, like the dream he had last week. He was on a motorcycle, being chased by a grizzly bear that ignored the dozens of tasty pedestrians around it to focus on loping after him, Terminator-style. Sure, the whole situation was scary. It also made perfect sense. The important thing to do was keep moving forward. Don’t turn around, don’t look back. 

Time passed. Utter silence except for his breathing, his footsteps shuffling through the dirt, the wind through the trees. Later, he thought about creepy it was. _Eldritch_ , one of Dustin’s favorite D&D words. In the moment, he was thinking positive. Sure, the voices were silent, ignoring his questions, his commands to provide him with additional information. _Please god damn it pretty please._ But he could handle the ambiguity because he had a purpose. This, whatever this consisted of, was his purpose. He stopped at a stream, standard water burbling over regular rocks, and dunked his head in; he scooped water into his mouth, icy and delicious and tasting of water, not anything else. Worried too late he’d made a terrible mistake. Did this mean he was doomed to live the rest of his days here?

Minutes later, hours later there was a break in the trees. Another ledge, another cliff. This one was more yellow than brown. But what he saw, spread before him, was brand new. A fantasy map; or a real map but an ancient one, when everyone believed the world was flat and every region had its own distinct look, its own distinct characteristic. Just the one. Far away but he could see every detail. His eyes had been polished to a high, hard shine; they felt like they belonged to someone, something else. 

He saw a monastery in impossibly high mountains, built above the clouds that floated near its peaks. An old growth forest with twisted, massive trunks, sunlight filtering through the dense foliage to the leaf-littered floor. He bet himself that if he looked more closely he’d see wooden structures high in the treetops: some elaborate, some simple. Connected by precarious walkways, the only way to reach them from the ground was via free swinging rope ladders that could be swiftly removed. There was a vast desert with shifting dunes, not an oasis in sight. A lake covered in blue-white glaciers, dirt dripping down them like chocolate syrup. A flat, dusty plain so wide open he saw cloud shadows racing across it. 

Each region - biome, a school word penetrating his consciousness - was fairly distinct, but also regularly shaped. Like pictures he’d drawn, back when he used to draw that kind of stuff.If he stayed long enough he was sure he’d come across the animals he’d drawn years ago: foxes and badgers and stoats. Or at least, what he imagined stoats looked like. Wild horses and mean-eyed seagulls. No deer. 

It was pretty. 

It was pretty _awesome_. 

The thought, contradictorily, blew the accepting fog from his brain. His palms were sweaty. He was, in fact, sweaty all over. But not like when he woke up in the motel, or from the unaccustomed hiking, from standing too long under an egg-bright sun. He was sweaty like when had the flu. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to lie down. 

He promised El he wouldn’t do this on his own. But this time was different, he couldn’t have known. 

Did he see this, unconsciously, years ago and draw it? Or did he draw it, somehow make it when he walked into and through the van? 

He tried to recollect, did he draw people? Was there someone he could talk to? But at thirteen, at that stage in his Mind Flayer recovery, his goal was to get away from everyone’s concern. If there were people, they were deliberately uncurious. No sentient animals either. He was too old for that shit. 

He sat down. He lay down. He definitely had the flu. His head was swimmy, eyes runny and unfocused. His limbs were overcooked spaghetti, iron weights strapped to them.

He could do it again, the headlong rush down the trail, hoping at the bottom to find the van. Except he didn’t have time; he’d never make it. 

He was close enough to the edge that it took only three turns. The flat ground sloped: to help him on his way, in case he changed his mind about rolling off it. 

*

When he came to, a rat - its long, pink tail - twitched within inches of his face. He flailed and shouted, _Get away don't touch me disgusting gross fuck_ , from somewhere so deep within him the words had lost all power by the time they reached the surface, were nothing more than a whisper, a grunt.

He’d beseeched the voices, whatever higher power existed (no, he never believed they were the same) for a soft landing. No one, nothing was listening. He’d fallen onto concrete, was staring straight up at the sky, no longer black but bright indigo embroidered with shimmering threads of violet. He felt like he’d gone ten rounds with that dream bear. 

Then came the rush of nausea. Something inside him had taken the rest of him on a journey, in the process turned him inside out. Like a sock, all the stitches revealed and now his body was briskly, impersonally pulling him rightside out, removing all traces of Elsewhere. He rolled to his side and lurched to all fours, heaving. His mouth a sticky, rotten mess; torn asunder.

Maybe El was right, he thought blearily. Maybe what he’d experienced the first time, up on that cliff, was nothing more than a really good trip. 

His eyes were fucked up, burned like he'd scraped them along the concrete. Whatever he focused on he could see, albeit with minimal clarity, but around the edges it was a blur. Colors were not what they should be, and they kept changing. He could see his hand but in the background weren’t heaps of cars but shadows glowing burnt orange, then emerald, then chartreuse. 

This time, there was a payphone. He didn’t remember climbing over the fence, staggering to the truck, fumbling for his keys. When he woke up he was slumped in the driver’s seat. Jonathan was banging frantically on the window, enveloped by a blue and gold halo, like some Indian deity. He didn’t immediately recognise him.

“Will! Open the fucking door!” 

He slithered out of the cab, would have fallen to his knees if Jonathan wasn’t there: one hand supporting him, the other cupping his face, stroking his hair.

“Are you ok? Are you hurt? Why did you go to sleep? If you have a concussion you shouldn’t go to sleep.”

The dizziness faded and he stood straighter, pushed Jonathan away as diplomatically as he was capable of. “I’m fine. I do not have a concussion. I’ve had one before, I know what it’s like. My head hurts but I’m ok.” 

Jonathan sagged with relief, eyes brimming with tears. Rather than blink them away or let them fall, he turned and stomped off: high-shouldered and aslant. Down the sidewalk he stalked, periodically turning around to check he was still there, still standing.

When he returned, he was different. Shoulders still stiff but now broad. His chest was puffed, eyes dry and blazing. 

"I'm..."

“Don’t. Absolutely don’t fucking say you’re sorry. I know you’re not.”

“But…”

“And don’t say this time you had a good reason. Or promise you won’t do it again; or that you’ll be more careful next time. Because that’s bullshit.” Jonathan's voice was saw-toothed. “Tell me what happened and don’t lie. I’ll know if you’re lying.” 

He made a motion to open the driver’s side door, step back into the safety of the truck but again Jonathan stopped him. “Right here. Right now. Tell me what happened.” 

_Just the facts, ma’am._ He kept his explanation short, tried not to add details that were true but would come across as pleas for sympathy. Which only made him sound like a lunatic. Words were almost useless; they’d barely sufficed for El. He hadn’t yet learned to show, not tell. He hadn’t thought to bring anything back with him. In this case, what difference would it have made? What could he prove himself with: a sprinkle of brown sand, a fistful of sea grass and a sprig of trampled leaves? 

He dribbled to a halt and waited for the verdict. Jonathan took his time. He rocked back and forth on his heels and stared blankly at the sky, now a lake as planished as aluminum. With a sniff that managed to convey a multitude of emotions - irritation, disbelief, weariness and, of course, disappointment - he looked at him. 

“Since you say you’re fine, though you’re obviously not, I’ll say it. I’m not sure how much more of this I can handle.” As he said _this_ he waved his arms around. A totally inadequate word, not at all what he wanted to say but he didn't have anything better. “You’re driving me absolutely, totally fucking crazy, Will. I’m exhausted. Whatever is going on with you - and I’m not going to pretend that I understand, that I fully believe everything you’re telling me though I’m willing to, given some time, some more evidence - it doesn’t give you the right to act like a maniac. To not give a shit about anyone else.”

His words felt like being punched in the gut, or the chest, or the face. All three. _Wham kapow crack._

Not ever, in his entire life, had Jonathan talked to him like this. Not when he dropped his first press of Scary Monsters at just the angle to shatter it into a thousand pieces. Not when he’d told Dad it was Jonathan who left his gun loaded with the safety off, when it was really him, and Jonathan got the shit kicked out of him. Not when he spent six months refusing to be left alone at home, forcing Jonathan to stay with him while Mom was at work. Not when he changed his mind and told him to stop being so protective, he wasn’t his dad. Not when he lied to him for almost a year about the slugs inside him. _I'm fine, I'm fine. Stop treating me like a baby._

And Jonathan chose tonight to say he'd had enough? After everything he’d been through since leaving Hawkins? After being pulled this way and that way by the world: drowning in the thoughts of his mom and his sister and total strangers; his brother’s god damn girlfriend. After finally, finally experiencing a breakthrough, taking charge of his life and walking through a door - of his own making! - into another fucking world, Jonathan was carping at him about being _inconsiderate_? About his _manners_? 

What, precisely, had Jonathan been doing, since they moved from Hawkins, that was so important? 

He was mad. Furiously, righteously, hair-on-fire mad. Rage filled his lungs with smoke and heat, he could breathe fire.

“You don’t know what it’s like!” he yelled, but he wasn’t loud enough. He tried again. “You don’t know what it’s like, over there in your stupid trailer with your stupid friend being stupid stoners while this has eaten my whole fucking life. I can’t think about anything else. If I could stop any of this, all of this I would.” Jonathan tilted his head and crossed his arms over his chest, exasperation radiating from him in waves sticky as blood. 

“I wish I could be boring and normal like you!” The veins in his wrists throbbed, his hands shook. “Spending all my time thinking about music and my girlfriend. Going to work, going out, coming home and having nothing else to think about besides doing the very same thing the next day. Being a martyr about not going to college when it was your decision! All of us thought it was a stupid idea, but you believe we’ll fall apart without you. Maybe ‘cause you don’t really want to be on your own, making your own life. ‘Cause you don’t know who’d you be without us, if you didn’t have me and Mom and now El to worry about.” 

Months ago, he'd overheard Mom and Jonathan discussing school. Actually, it was an argument. Though for them, a low key one. Mom told him that kids who defer college, take on full time jobs ‘just for a year’ get in trouble. They start making money and think they’ve got it made. They never go to school; only realize much later - five years down the line when they’re in the same job, making no more money than they made five years ago - they might have given up a good opportunity. But by then it’s too late. They’ve forgotten how to study. They have too many responsibilities. They have kids.

“Take it from me Jonathan, you will never forgive yourself if you let this go. You'll be angry: with me, for asking too much of you when you were only in middle school, letting you think of yourself as a parent. With your siblings, for keeping you here. With yourself, for letting your dreams go so easily. El can’t work but Will can, just like you did.” 

“But maybe he shouldn’t have to. Maybe he can’t handle it. You and I both know he’s been off.”

“Maybe it would be good for him to have something new to focus on. Someone counting on him who’s not us. Something to work on, something physical. Outside his head.”

“And maybe the pressure will only make things worse.”

He expected Jonathan to crumple into a contrite, ashamed ball, to admit that he had his number. He was sorely mistaken. 

Jonathan snorted and rolled his eyes, stepped closer. Under the acrid, brown scent of motel room coffee was the curdled milk of morning breath. “How the hell can you expect me to know what you’re going through?” He spoke fast and low, gravelly. He didn’t sound like himself. “It was only eight hours ago that you bothered to tell me the deep dark secrets you’ve been hiding for the last year. You only called me because you’d completely fucked yourself. I’m only chaperoning you because you have no other options.” The words came out sharp and precise, no pausing to search for the correct word or phrase. 

He placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You want to know why I’m here? The last two times I took my eyes off you when I should have been watching, I almost lost you. I’ve spent the last three years trying to make up for shit I didn’t know about, couldn’t be expected to know about. That you, time and again, got mad about when I dared show concern, when I asked the most basic questions. And apparently, after driving you ten hours across the fucking state, a few hours of sleep is a luxury I can’t afford. In case you disappear into thin air without writing me a note to show Mom. _Off to explore new worlds! If I don’t make it back, it was all for the best! Don’t blame yourselves!_ ” 

Another hand, another shoulder. “You want to know why I’m living in a fucking trailer behind the house? Because Mom cannot afford to feed you on her salary, and welfare benefits are being cut left and right.” 

“I know that!”

“But you don’t get it. The consequences for us. For me. You think I’m staying with you because it makes me feel good, because I have no dreams of my own? You think I enjoy seeing Nancy move on with her life? Find it fun, doing the same boring work day after day? Maybe if I sulked and pouted, threw temper tantrums you’d get it.” His fingers tightened.  “You have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life? Fuck, I don’t know. I’ve stopped thinking about it. What’s the point? It’s tough enough to get through this day. And then the next one.” He shook him.

“Ow! You’re hurting me!” It wasn't a total lie. His head did hurt and the shakes exacerbated the pain. But he mostly said it because he knew how Jonathan would react. A low blow and he went there, though nothing Jonathan said was wrong. The first time his brother spoke to him like an equal, he shut him down. He couldn’t take it. He didn’t want to listen. 

His words had an instantaneous effect. Jonathan dropped his hands like he’d been scalded and leapt back, face morphing from shocked to guilty to horrified to abjectly sorry. 

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Even though I know you mean it. I’m fine. Don’t freak out. It didn’t hurt, I overreacted.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jonathan said it anyway. "I don't know why I did that. I'm sorry." He hesitated, clearly wanting to touch him but afraid to, wanting to touch him but believing he didn’t deserve to. So he pulled him close, hugged him tight until he reciprocated, hands resting on his back like it was made of spun sugar. 

Jonathan was the one to pull back, teary again. He was always quick to get mad, quick to cry, quick to both forgive and apologize. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and sighed. Stared at his high tops and sighed again, forlorn. 

Just like on the Elsewhere cliff top, his emotions nonsensically one-eightied. Suddenly, he was full of love, he was swimming in it. His heart was a vessel too small to hold his emotions; it was overflowing, filling every nook and cranny, every capillary, organ and fold of muscle with feeling. He wanted to hold this shitty, humiliating, melodramatic moment close and never let go. 

“Are you hungry?” Before Jonathan could start muttering about their appointment, worrying about showers and tooth-brushing and looking presentable. “I’m starving.” And he was. Heart full, stomach empty. 

“There’s an IHOP, near the motel.”

“Sounds great.”

Jonathan smiled at him, watery. “I’m driving.”

*

A six-inch stack of silver dollar, chocolate chip pancakes topped with butter and whipped cream, maple syrup pooling down the sides. Sausage, eggs and bacon. Hash browns and fried potatoes. Orange juice and coffee. His stomach growled, then rolled at the thought of putting tongue to food, all that sticky, salty sweetness coating his lips. 

The overhead lights were back to normal: margarine yellow, too bright. They pushed against the reddened whites of his eyes; sucked the moisture from his corneas and cranked tighter and tighter the lever screwed into his temple. He missed his scarf and El's odd, matter-of-fact presence. He missed Lucas' strength and Mike's confidence, his comfort. He missed Max's bravado, her rationality. Dustin's sweetness and brainy humor. 

The restaurant was alien, askew. The text wriggling across the menu, the vinyl squeaking under his ass. The scrape of fork and knife against plate, the mellow hum of five thirty in the morning conversation. He heard a bark that sounded like laughter, another that sounded like a sob. The bacon - its jiggling chunks of white fat, its animal smell - made him gag but he couldn't stop eating it, chasing it with coffee from a cup that was always full. 

He wrinkled his nose at Jonathan’s almost black coffee, the sheen of oil across it. Jonathan did the same for his. “Mine is coffee the way it should be drunk. That,” he pointed to his mug, three long pours from the crusty sugar dispenser, creamer glugged in until it was milkier than his skin, “is gross. A travesty. Heresy against all that is coffee.”

The sugar eased his headache more than the ibuprofen Jonathan'd forced on him. He didn’t mention it, in case it came across as another attempt to guilt trip him. 

Though his eyes had adjusted he still saw them: the colors. Not the fake, spray-painted ones in this restaurant and their motel room, the dozens of signs they passed on their drive from home to here. Not in nature, either. He suspected that even in the prettiest garden on Earth they didn’t have the blues and reds, oranges and browns, greens and yellows that he saw in the Elsewhere. The most perfect expressions of themselves. He didn’t have to close his eyes to see them, how they manifested, but it was only a matter of time, hours or days, before he lost sight of them. Unless he could find a way to return. 

He reached, unseeing, for the last piece of bacon, cogitating on his cliff-top view, how each region was in a different part of the day, sunrise to moonrise, like he was seeing the entire world at once, when the tines of Jonathan’s fork poked the top of his hand. Softly.

“You haven’t eaten your eggs.” 

“No.” And like Jonathan had reached down his throat with his fork and scraped the words out of him: “I’m scared.” 

He shuddered with embarrassment, but Jonathan only smiled. “Of course you are. I’m a little scared, and I’m just along for the ride. Regardless,” he grimaced in apology, “you should eat something more than bacon. Who knows when our next meal will be; or what’ll it be. El ate toaster strudels, beef jerky and room temperature Spaghetti O’s for the three days she was with them.”

“They’re cold.”

“They’ll ground you.” An odd choice of words, and Jonathan tried to be deliberate with his choice of words. 

What he said made sense. He needed to tether himself to this world, right now. The weight of an overstuffed (mushrooms and tomatoes, ham and cheese) three-egg omelette, a mess of hash browns, a blast of orange juice to wash it down might do the trick. He bent his neck and commenced shoveling.

“If we have time, before we go home we should catch a show. You can watch me slam dance, learn a thing or two.”

“You!” he scoffed.

“Me,” he asserted, unruffled. “I’ll have you know that I have a life outside of work and you all.”

“So you claim.”

“Not the most thrilling one, currently, but yeah. I stand by that.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“For running off in the middle of the night?”

“No. You already told me not to apologize for that. Though I swear I'll leave you a note, next time. For school, not going this year. For being stuck with us.”

With a visible effort, Jonathan ignored his flippant promise. He pushed his plate to the middle of the table and gestured at his half-eaten stack of pancakes. _Have at it_. “It’s just a year. Lots of people defer. Some of them even for financial reasons. And next year I might be here, I have a few more weeks before I have to decide.”

“Might be here? So Mom was right, you won’t be in school!”

“I didn’t say that. I said I might not be in school here. I could enroll in a state college closer to home. They’re cheaper, and have a lot more students like me, working and going to school. It’s a luxury, after all, to focus entirely on classes, your only job a few hours of work-study.”

His stomach dropped at the thought Jonathan wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be someone he could come visit in the future, stay with while working with El’s sister.“And we can’t afford to let you focus entirely on classes,” he said as he chided himself: _Don’t get ahead yourself._

Jonathan shrugged. “Maybe I don’t want that. I don’t know. I thought I did, but stuff has come up recently.”

“With…” 

“It’s not a coincidence we moved where we did. It’s the place we were allowed to go.”

“How do you figure that? Mom was excited.”

“Mom was selling us on the idea. She’d move into a split-level within spitting distance of Three Mile Island if it meant we could get away from Hawkins. How do you think we sold the house, found our new place so quickly? There are federal government offices in the city, and not just the ones concerned with ranching and construction permits.”

“So they’re keeping tabs on us?” he paled.

"Of course, but it helps there’s not much to see. El has no powers. Mom works. I work and am a couple thousand miles away from my crusading partner in crime. And we all know,” he said, joking but not joking, “that I’m no one without her. And you? You wander around the desert getting high and communing with nature.”

“When you put it like that.” 

“And now we’re on a road trip to check out the college I’m going to in a few months, to get things settled and show you a good time. You’ve picked a discreet power.” 

“No dropping to the ground and shrieking at the top of my lungs.”

“No growing vines under the town.”

“No loosing killer dogs on the town.” An awkward pause, but Jonathan rallied.

“No being stolen in the middle of the night.”

“No speaking in tongues.” 

“Or psychic map-drawing for a roomful of feds.” 

Jonathan checked his watch, tapped it. “Finish up.” He twisted in his seat, searching for their waitress. “We gotta go in five. You will be taking a shower and getting into clean clothes, before we go.” 

They drove from the near-suburban edges into the real city. He tracked the changes. The seedy main drag, plastered in neon, turned to one and two story, cookie cutter houses placed too close to the road, which turned into taller apartment buildings interspersed with stores and schools. Eventually, wider sidewalks and smoother roads, more obviously residential. There were shade trees, not the weedy, adolescent type but old ones, well-tended, many in bloom. A rainbow of painted houses - small, medium and large, spick-and-span and crumbling on their foundations - were fronted by porches. Everywhere he looked he saw signs: in windows, in yards, tacked to front doors.

DIVEST NOW

SILENCE = DEATH 

MY BODY, MY CHOICE

FUCK CAPITALISM

FSLN

THE DEATH PENALTY IS DEAD WRONG

JUST SAY YES

LESBIANS UNITE

He felt small and ignorant, a small town bumpkin. He wasn’t sure what some of the slogans meant. There was so much happening in the world, and he spent less and less time engaging with it as it was, on the surface, with his meat and potatoes body. If he kept traveling the path he was on, in a few years he’d be like someone shot into space and returned to earth decades later. Rip Van Winkle. 

They found parking a few blocks away. Took their time, walking to the house, stopping to smell the flowers. Apart from its extremeness, there was nothing to distinguish it from the others. It wanted to be the most vividly painted, greenest, most hippie-commie-anarchist place in the neighborhood. Not hiding at all, not like what El described to him about Chicago. 

“Is this discreet?”

“Sure. For someone whose previous vocation was homicidal vigilante.” 

They climbed the steps. He had a crazy urge to grab Jonathan's hand, squeeze it and not let go. 

“There’s a chance you’ll be here in the fall? You can do your own thing, I wouldn’t bother you. Not that I’m saying I’ll be here after today but just in case. You might be around?”

“Of course.” Accompanied by a reassuring elbow to his ribs. “You won't be alone in this, I promise. Not even when you want to be.”

He expected someone large, with presence. The way El talked about her, like her three days in Chicago had changed the course of her life. “I wouldn’t have been able to close the The Gate without her,” she’d said repeatedly. “She was the key. She and…” leaving _Hopper -_ _Dad -_ unsaid.

The door opened halfway. Propping it open with her hip was a short, a very short girl wearing a loose flannel shirt, brown toes peeking out from under her rolled up, baggy jeans. Her black hair, shot through with pink, was piled on top of her head, kept in place with a banana clip. She had deep set eyes, a snub chin and a round face. A sweet face. His mouth formed an O of surprise.

Jonathan folded his hands behind his back and smiled at her like a Mormon on a mission.

“Jane’s brother.” She turned her gaze to Jonathan. “Jane’s brothers.” 

Her voice was amused, but not sarcastic. The way she said it, _Jane's_ _brothers,_ was more like they were foreign words she was testing out: trying to get the tone right, put the emphasis in the correct places.

Kali pushed the door fully open, gestured. “Enter. Please.” 

Behind her was a standard crash-pad: a big front room with a random assortment of posters, a random assortment of faded rugs and Indian print covered futons, a card table with folding chairs, a sidewalk coffee table, cans overflowing with hand rolled cigarettes, crates of records next to a stereo system that cost more than everything in the house combined. A long hallway led to a sunny kitchen, backlit figures moving within it. From it wafted smells, good ones: brewing coffee and baking bread.

He stole a glance at Jonathan, who was already looking at him, waiting for him. 

He took a deep breath. 

He walked through. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap. My Byers saga is complete. If you've stuck with me all these months (years), thank you! I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
